The one thing that the 1986 side have in common with today’s team was the ability to put together a long run of winning games. Klopp’s men have won 14 times in a row in the league. Dalglish’s team, who were 11 points behind Everton at the beginning of March, dropped just two points before the end of the season. But they needed a win at Chelsea, against a club that had been in the title race until the last month of the season.

The game will always be remembered for Dalglish’s first-half strike that sealed a 1-0 victory. The match also illustrates the massive changes in the environment and tactics of the sport in the past 33 years.

Klopp almost always adheres to a 4-3-3 system. Dalglish, in his first year as player manager, was much more flexible. An hour before kick-off at the Bridge, with the title at stake, the Scot informed the dressing-room the team would be operating with three centre backs instead of their usual four-man defence.

“We’d never worked on it in training, it was just, ‘This is what we’re going to do’ in the team talk,” Mark Lawrenson, the centre half, said. When Klopp makes changes to the way his side set up, the variations are exhaustively tested on the training ground. Dalglish trusted his players to work out what to do on the fly.

When Mo Salah and Co. take the lead, Liverpool continue to press forward, eager to score more, thrilling their fans. Their predecessors in 1986 prided themselves on a different method.

“If we scored after 20 minutes everyone could stop watching,” Steve Nicol, the full back, said. “The game was over. We played the same in the league as we did in Europe. The first job was to keep the ball.”

At Stamford Bridge they turned that approach into an art form. “Has there ever been a more professional performance?” Nicol asked with pride. “We made the game crap. We killed that game. We were never not going to win the title. They had no chance.”

Whatever the result on Sunday, Klopp’s squad will warm down, travel back to Liverpool by plane in luxury and replenish their expended energy under the keen eye of a team of nutritionists. The German manager will be looking ahead to the League Cup tie against MK Dons next Wednesday and the Premier League match-up against Sheffield United the following Saturday. The focus will not slip.

Dalglish’s team had two games still to play in 1986 – a Super League tie at home to Norwich City three days after Stamford Bridge and an FA Cup final against Everton the next Saturday. Everton at Wembley with the Double at stake was arguably the biggest fixture in the club’s history – and still might hold that status. Dalglish and his squad did something at Stamford Bridge that would be unthinkable today. They began drinking as soon as they left the pitch.

“We hit the ale in the dressing room and carried on drinking on the bus home. We were in a pretty happy state,” Lawrenson said. The long coach ride gave the team plenty of time to enjoy themselves and the journey was made lengthier when their transport failed just outside Birmingham.

“We were all hammered and then the coach broke down,” Lawrenson continued. “They had to call Liverpool – Ellison’s, the bus company – for a replacement.”

While the team waited – it was more than two hours before alternative transport arrived – they found a local pub and the alcohol kept flowing. They were in a rowdy and anarchic mood when the coach finally arrived.

“They sent the Everton team bus,” Lawrenson said. “The irony of it. We’d just beat them to the title, were playing them a week later at Wembley and the last part of our journey home was on their coach. We thought it was hysterical.

“Anyway, we made sure we trashed it.”

A week later they thrashed Everton winning 3-1 at Wembley to complete one of the most remarkable seasons in Anfield history. The events at Stamford Bridge have become part of Liverpool legend.

Antics like this have largely disappeared in football. Klopp’s style of management requires a different sort of physical and mental discipline. The stories that will be recounted in future about the German’s time in charge will largely be about what happened on the pitch.

That does not matter. If Klopp can bring the Premier League trophy back to Anfield the Kop will enjoy the experience just as much as their forbearers did in 1986. Some things never change at Liverpool. In the end, only winning matters.