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Monday 25 March 2013

News Media Watch from Liverpool FC: Echo: 'It was like watching Brazil'

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Echo: 'It was like watching Brazil'
Mar 25th 2013, 09:14

This story has been reproduced from today's media. It does not necessarily represent the position of Liverpool Football Club.

A certain generation of Liverpool FC supporters will be particularly hard to please.

Difficult to convince that life at Anfield can ever get more entertaining than it was a quarter of a century ago.

See, Reds fans were spoilt rotten in the 1987-88 season when Kenny Dalglish's side won the First Division title in brilliant and breath-taking style.

Liverpool amassed 90 points, scored 87 goals and lifted the championship trophy with four games of the season still left to play.

In nine league matches they scored four times, twice hammered five past bewildered rivals and only failed to score in four First Division games that uplifting campaign.

It was 10 months of football played at a pace others could not live with and performed by players who oozed talent.

For many of that era, who had seen the club succeed at home and abroad, there was little chance of the game being played in any more of a fulfilling way.

They were happy to be proved wrong that memorable season.

Twenty five years on, Liverpool's glorious title winning campaign is remembered in a special magazine 'Liverpool 87-88 Uncut' (Sport Media, £3.99).

The tribute publication features unseen pictures, interviews with players, fans and journalists from the time as well as the chance to relive some memorable wins, including the 5-0 thumping of Brian Clough's Nottingham Forest.

It was a period in the club's history some have labelled as Liverpool's 'Samba Season'.

"From August of that year I'd been watching something I'd never seen before," says Daily Mirror columnist and lifelong Red, Brian Reade in the magazine.

"Something quite extra-ordinary, quite sublime. Poetry in red motion.

"The most beautiful football a Liverpool team had ever played.

"Beauty I'm still waiting to be surpassed."

The majority of Liverpool fans had to wait longer than normal to catch a glimpse of this electric side because the side's first three games of the season were all away.

A collapsed sewer underneath the Kop meant the Reds had to wait until September 12 to play at home. By the time they returned to Merseyside, Dalglish's men had beaten Arsenal, Coventry and drawn with West Ham, scoring seven times.

Oxford United were soundly beaten by goals from John Aldridge and John Barnes, on his home debut.

But the opening months of the season belonged to full-back Steve Nicol who netted six times in his first six league games.
It was going to be one of those seasons where old and new and the likely and unlikely combined perfectly.

"We had a great mix of players," Dalglish remembers.

"It was unusual for Liverpool to have two or three new players coming in straight into the first-team from the start of the season. Normally people went into the reserves and had to work their way in. For those new lads to settle so quickly was a great credit to them."

With the money from Ian Rush's £3.2m transfer to Juventus in the bank, Liverpool steadily set about rebuilding for life after the great hitman.

They used the money wisely and across all areas of the pitch.

In came Aldridge for £750,000 from Oxford during January '87, Nigel Spackman followed a month later from Chelsea in a deal worth £400,000.

The season ended, Everton beat Liverpool to the title but the Reds refused to feel sorry for themselves and went and captured John Barnes, for nearly one million pounds, and Newcastle's Peter Beardsley for almost two.

Dalglish's final piece of the puzzle was Ray Houghton, a team-mate of Aldridge's at Oxford, and worth every penny of the £825,000 Liverpool parted with in October.

By the time he arrived, Liverpool had just thumped the league leaders, Queens Park Rangers, 4-0.

Aldridge set a club record of scoring in 10 consecutive league matches and would go onto plunder 29 that season.

But the afternoon belonged to Barnes, the crown jewel in Liverpool's sparkling play.

"The best player I ever played with," is Aldridge's assessment in the magazine.

"Simple as that. He was unmarkable.

"People criticised him for his England career but England were a very ordinary side in the late 1980s.

"We weren't."

A 4-0 win over Barnes' old club Watford on November 24 at Anfield saw the Reds return to the top of the First Division, where they would remain for the rest of the season.

They began the month by beating Everton 2-0 at Anfield and as the season moved into December, Liverpool were building up a serious head of steam.

By the time of the return derby at Goodison, Liverpool were unbeaten in the league for 29 games.

Wayne Clarke's goal would prevent the Reds equalling Burnley's record from the 20s of 30 matches unbeaten but Dalglish's men continued to march towards the title.

And in the middle of April, perhaps their finest work of all came when Forest were blitzed.

"You couldn't see it bettered anywhere, not even in Brazil," was the watching Sir Tom Finney's assessment.

Victory over Tottenham Hotspur on April 23 confirmed them as champions but it merely dotting the 'I's and crossed the 'T's on a season they were way beyond everyone else.

Under Brendan Rodgers, Liverpool have played with flair and excitement but a fan from the 'Samba Season' will tell you the current crop still have a way to go.

Source: Liverpool Echo

This story has been reproduced from today's media. It does not necessarily represent the position of Liverpool Football Club.

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