On The Ball | Liverpool are worthy English Premier League champions – whenever it happens
- No need for an asterisk beside the club’s first English Premier League title and no sense to call season off
- Season will set record for England’s longest after 1946-47, another time Liverpool ended a long wait to be champions
Liverpool have made a habit of stretching out title-winning seasons.
Jurgen Klopp’s team will eventually be awarded the Premier League trophy after football’s ruling bodies agreed that the campaign must be finished. When that will happen is anyone’s guess.
One thing is for sure: by the time Jordan Henderson lifts the silverware, the record for English football’s longest season will have been broken by some distance. In 1946-47, the final top-flight game was played on June 14. Liverpool were top of the league but Stoke City could leapfrog them. The Kop were left sweating – and not only from the summer sun.
Stoke’s final game was away to Sheffield United and it ended in defeat and disappointment with the Potteries side losing 2-1. The title went to Anfield, where a packed house was watching the Liverpool Senior Cup final against Everton. When the news was relayed from Bramall Lane five minutes before the end of this Merseyside derby, the crowd of 40,000 celebrated wildly. It was Liverpool’s first title in 24 years.
“The roar which greeted this announcement made the Hampden Park one sound like a childish whisper,” the local paper reported. The comparison with the Glasgow stadium gives a sense of the excitement on the Kop. Hampden could then pack in nearly 150,000 people and regularly reached the six-figure attendance mark for big games.
