Liverpool vs Manchester United: A classic fixture that hasn't produced a classic game in years - but why?

In the 35 meetings since the 3-2 classic at Anfield in September 1999 , there has only been one game where both sides have scored twice

Miguel Delaney
Chief Football Writer
Friday 13 October 2017 11:07 BST
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Liverpool and Manchester United have played out some classics - but not for a long time
Liverpool and Manchester United have played out some classics - but not for a long time

As far as introductions to English football’s greatest rivalry go, few can have been as intense as Mickael Silvestre’s. It was, in so many ways, the sort of thing that just wouldn’t happen today.

“It was a crazy game,” Silvestre tells the Independent of that first match away to Liverpool back in September 1999, that also happened to come in his very first few days at Manchester United after signing from Internazionale for £4m. “I landed on the Thursday night, the gaffer picks me up and I sign my contract with [chief executive] David Gill the next morning, go training, take the bus to Liverpool in the afternoon… then the next morning I’m starting.”

Sir Alex Ferguson had a few words for the then 22-year-old, but not too many instructions.

“We have an injury crisis,” Ferguson told Silvestre. “Right now I need you in the side. I know you’re capable. We’ve been watching you play centre-half for France, Denis [Irwin] is injured, so straight away you’re going to play left-back.”

“I’m like ‘fine’, I’d been playing there for Inter, ‘let’s go’… but I had no idea what I was going to face,” Silvestre now says. “At that time there was no video analysis. So, apart from some names, I’m just discovering a Liverpool team.”

That kind of gut-instinct risk-taking led to what was one of many raucously entertaining Liverpool-United games around that time. This was the morning when Jamie Carragher scored two own goals, the match swung both ways, and United ended up winning 3-2 with Silvestre himself having to divert one dangerous Liverpool attack with a speculative diving header.

It was “crazy”, “electric”, Silvestre says now. The charge of it all, however, was soon followed by a change. Silvestre’s first game for United also represented the last of something. It was the last time there was real life to this fixture.

That 3-2 in 1999 was actually the fifth time in their 15 meetings since the 1992 foundation of the Premier League that both sides scored twice in a game. It had followed three 2-2s and a 3-3, with that trend itself following from similarly fearsome games in the 1980s Division One. The spark from the imaginary cigar that Gordon Strachan puffed after scoring the last equalising goal for United in another 3-3 in 1988, however, was soon put out.

Silvestre made his United debut at Anfield in a thriller 

In the 35 encounters since that September 1999 match, there has only been one game where both sides have scored twice: United’s 3-2 win at Old Trafford in September 2010 when Dimitar Berbatov scored a hat-trick. By then, though, the chaotic 2-2s had already become turgid 1-0s. The goal average has since dropped from 3.1 per game between 1992-99 to 2.3 from 2000 to now.

It is not just about strikerates, though. It is also about the football, the moments, the memories.

Following on from the helter-skelter games of the 1980s, those first seven years of the Premier League offered sensations like the Liverpool comeback from 3-0 in 1994, Eric Cantona’s 1996 return, Robbie Fowler’s outrageously brilliant double that day to dull it, David James’ calamity to hand United the title in 1997 and another Liverpool comeback completed by former United Paul Ince to make it 2-2 in 1999.

The two rivals have had some classic clashes 

Since then, there’s been United’s 4-0, Liverpool’s 4-1, John O’Shea’s late winner and David Moyes’ side getting demolished 3-0 but those headlines have been memorable precisely because they’ve come from otherwise forgettable one-sided or one-tone matches far removed from the raucous all-action encounters of before.

The grimness of the Luis Suarez racism storm in 2011-12 summed up the gradual decline of the fixture as a spectacle, especially as the initial incident developed out of yet another cagey 1-1 draw.

England’s greatest rivalry now rarely offers a great spectacle. It has become a match to be endured rather than enjoyed, underscored by attrition rather than overtaken by adventure. Think about it. When was the last truly memorable meeting? When was the last truly memorable moment? A stifling tension has taken hold. This historic fixture now rarely offers any hysterics, except in ludicrously hyped build-ups that only end up serving to accentuate how contrastingly constrained the games are. Last season’s 0-0 at Anfield was a nadir in that respect, but still just the extreme of the type of match that has become the norm.

The question then is why? Why has this prestigious fixture lost the kind of fire that once made it? Where has that “electricity” gone?

“I think, when we played in the 1980s and 1990s, we just went out there to entertain,” Liverpool legend Ian Rush tells The Independent. “It was ‘you play football, we’ll play football. You give it to us [physically], we’ll give it to you back.’"

Some of those words are taken further by Steve Nicol, who played for Liverpool between 1981 and 1994 and says the fixture is now lacking qualities that made it more visceral.

Anfield has seen some truly memorable meetings 

“When I think of those games, I think of the physical part of the game,” he says. “From the first minute to the last minute, every single person on the field and at the stadium was on the edge of their feet because there was physical confrontation from start to finish. The real bare bones of those days were ‘you win the fight, and if you win the fight you win the match’.”

Modern refereeing has removed much of that from the game, but that is not all that has diluted what Bryan Robson has described as “the passion” that used to really power these encounters.

Many might point to the more international nature of the squads and, while that is somewhat overstated, it is still true that even a foreign player who really invests himself in the lore of the fixture - like Dirk Kuyt, like Diego Forlan - still can’t recreate the raw feeling that comes from a local like Gary Neville because he so remembers every painful Liverpool win and trophy from the past.

More than about the identity of the players, though, it is about the specific modern identities imposed on the sides - and something that Silvestre alluded to.

Players are no longer going out so fired by emotion, but instead more conscious of specific instructions and gameplans. Silvestre explains that the build-ups in 2006 were very different to even those in 1999. For the players, they were no longer about passion, but preparation.

“The game analysis, the video analysis, the tactical work is all greater,” Silvestre says. “There is now a preparation that locks the rhythm of the game. The players are being cautious. They have much more to think about, they have many more orders than before. Maybe that stops them, stops the flow going. One of Sir Alex's strengths was evolving with that.”

And he adapted in other ways.

Liverpool and United meet again this weekend 

The more meagre goalscoring stats of the 2004-09 big-four era reflected a generally greater caution in the Premier League as well as the influence of a new generation of managers more concerned with “control” like Jose Mourinho and Rafa Benitez.

“His [Benitez’s] mode on the touchline was to constantly move his players around the pitch,” Ferguson would say in his second autobiography, as well as a bit more. “Benitez had more regard for defending and destroying a game than winning it… I found them dull.”

Some on Merseyside raised a smile at that. Robbie Fowler argued that Ferguson was so spooked by Liverpool’s spectacular displays in the 1995-96 season, claiming a 2-2 draw in Cantona’s comeback and then well beating United 2-0 at Anfield, that he merely set out to destroy the game in the 1996 FA Cup final.

Roy Keane was to be fair going around shouting at the United players to be ready for “hard work boys, this is f***ing hard work” and would talk about how a battler like Nicky Butt was perfect for “this kind of operation”. Those aren't exactly words that reflect expressive adventure. That 1-0 United win, still lifted by Cantona’s redemptive match-winner, was a precursor in so many ways.

Mourinho and Klopp are both desperate for three points 

“Everything was different,” Liverpool centre-half John Scales has told The Independent's Simon Hughes about that FA Cup final. “The build-up, the enormity of playing United.”

Diluted passion and changes in the general game aren’t sufficient on their own, after all, to explain the change in this fixture. There’s also the very fixture itself, and what it’s been built up to be. "The enormity," as Scales puts it. “The game has become too big,” Andy Heaton of The Anfield Wrap says. “There’s huge pressure, so it tends to be a let-down.”

That has not been helped by the fact Liverpool and United have actually been so rarely on good form at the same time, even though they are now part of another amped-up ‘big six’. Both of those fixtures have actually only added to the pressure. One side either has to continue a challenge, while the other has this one big opportunity to save face or a season, in the one big-six fixture - that have themselves become such events - built up more than the others. It has become so big, as Heaton says, that it can’t but create smaller mindsets on the pitch. Effective morality plays that the matches became around the Suarez saga only play into this. The wide parameters have become paralysing. The global stakes so high.

“The media’s different around it,” Rush argues. “Teams are now scared to lose. Sometimes there’s too much about the game, rather than just getting out there and showing what you can do.”

Different times.

“We avoided all of that,” Nicol adds. “I think the supporters miss out on it as well. Thinking about it, I think the way the fans felt in the 1980s was reflected in the way the game was on the field. I don’t think you can say that now, because of how it's played.”

And yet, as ever, it’s difficult not to be sucked in. It's difficult not to hope out of the hype. Jurgen Klopp puts out some of the most abrasively attacking teams in the game, Jose Mourinho’s current Manchester United are purring as they pour forward. It could be charged again. It could be electric again. There is new potential for an old throw-back.

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