Liverpool FC Season(s) 1997–98 through 2002/2003. An end of season extravaganza and seasonal extra, just for you!
I’ve been a lucky young man.
Welcome to Part 11, and indeed final part of my scrapbooking odyssey on the football team my dear old Mum “persuaded” me to follow when just a small boy and around the mercurial times of Kenneth Mathieson Dalglish, winnings cups in May and seemingly always holding that beautiful gleaming trophy with the “Big Ears”. This edition is slightly different from the previous 10 as in finally, at the age of (deleted by Editor), I finally hung up scrapbooking scissors and glue. So rather than a season by season scrapbook journey, this is a 5 season extravaganza of my final cuttings, a lament at a missing scrapbook and a box of programmes and a whole load of precious memories.
I attended my first Liverpool game as a 10 year old on 8th August 1982 when the Reds formed a “triangle” of pre-season friendlies with Coventry City and Ipswich Town and all hosted by my hometown club of Portsmouth. I was already a Red as far back as 1980 and I have no idea how my Mother achieved such a feat but she bought me the “Hitachi” home shirt and one I proudly wore as an 8 year old to a very stuffy, best bib and tucker occasion at Portsmouth Guildhall as I met the Lord Mayor after winning a painting competition with my entry, naturally entitled, “The Football Match”. So of course I was going to attend this Gala event as an 8 year old in my Liverpool shirt. What self respecting Red at that age wouldn’t?
So I’m not a Scouser (though I envy those with that particular birthplace) and I’m an “out of towner”. But please allow me to very briefly give you some bona fides as to the veracity of my support for this wonderful football club.
My first game was 1982 and my last was 2012. In the 30 years in between I have followed the Reds at over 55 league grounds in England and Wales as well as 7 European grounds and I’ve probably travelled to see them 300+ times. Not an idyll boast, nor is it overly ground breaking. I’ve been incredibly lucky as well as being incredibly skint watching the Reds! I became a season ticket holder in the season before the first lock down after being on the waiting list since 1998 . I had the crest tattooed on my arm as a 15 year old, I’ve sat on a cold coach for days going to Switzerland for a 2nd Round Cup Winners Cup tie, I watched *that* goal in *that* 1996 FA Cup Final on a tiny Casio TV outside “our” end of Wembley without a ticket.
Well, I had a ticket, but that’s a whole other story for another day.
So I’m a Southern born Red with a lot of scrapbook cuttings to share and maybe the occasional commentary to go along with them too. I hope you enjoy sharing them with me.
“Allez! Allez! Allez!”
Disclaimer — All pictures contained within this blog will be almost certainly from the “main” UK publications of the day but more importantly perhaps wholly contained within some loved, if dusty, scrapbooks of a 30 year vintage and placed here purely for enjoyment purposes and I hope that this disclaimer meets everyone’s needs. If not, thank you www.guardian.comwww.dailymail.co.ukwww.thetimes.co.ukwww.mirror.co.ukwww.telegraph.co.ukwww.liverpoolecho.co.uk et al for entertaining this Pritt Stick and scissors wielding young child/spotty teen/tall and gangly late teenager and young adult who should’ve stopped ripping and cutting up newspapers long before he hung up his scissors! All programmes shown here are from my personal collection.
Disclaimer II — This is far from a fully comprehensive review of the season and purely the contents and selected pages from my scrapbooks and boxes of football programmes. I was nicknamed by my Liverpool match going pal as “The Cutter” in reference to an Echo and the Bunnymen song and so hence, here are my cuttings.
Disclaimer III — There will be images from a certain reviled newspaper that I will not name and I only include them (where available) as they represent the cuttings at that time. I despise that “newspaper” and when I used to “go the match” I always wore my Hillsborough Support Group scarf and a white sticker imploring everyone not to buy that unnamed “newspaper”.
So onto the good stuff for the final time! I sincerely hope these scraps from my books jog a memory of the match concerned or of the era, the city in general or your life at that time.
Human memories are a precious commodity. I hope you enjoy.
The opening two weeks of the 1996/97 season see the Reds, and new signing and supreme marksman Karl-Heinz Riedle, take only 1 point from a possible 6 when expectations were high of a maximum points start to the season.
One of only two games I attended all season (I hadn’t fallen out of love with the Reds, more a reflection on a turbulent life), but I chose wisely as the Reds ended the opening month of the season with their first win, a 2–0 win over hosts Leeds United at Elland Road.
17 year old Michael Owen continues his incredible start to the season with the opening goal in a 1–1 draw with Blackburn Rovers at Ewood Park.
L to R: More from the 1–1 draw with Blackburn Rovers before Sheffield Wednesday are beaten 2–1 at Anfield and Steve McManaman scores *that* goal against Celtic in the 1st Leg of the 1st Round UEFA Cup tie with Celtic in front of 48,526 at Parkhead. I applied for tickets to this game and was childishly excited to be going to the famed Parkhead or Celtic Park, but the ticket allocation was severely reduced and although I qualified from previous European attendance I was denied the tickets.
and Michael Owen with *that* goal in a fantastic 2–2 draw with friendly Scottish rivals Celtic in the same game in the UEFA Cup.
A returning Stan Collymore can only grimace as Steve McManaman scores yet another wonder goal, this time at Anfield in the 3–0 win over Aston Villa on 22nd September.
September into October and five days that sees progress in both Europe with an away goals win over Celtic in the UEFA Cup and 3 league points at home to Chelsea as Patrik Berger scores a 37 minute hat-trick in the 4–2 win at Anfield.
Liverpool (4) Chelsea (2), 5th October 1997. Attendance at Anfield 36,647.
3 weeks that summed up a frustrating season for the Reds as a bitter defeat at local neighbours Everton (2–0) on 18th October was followed weeks later with a thumping 4–0 win at home to Tottenham Hotspur. 4 games were played in between with 4 points collected in the league but a bitterly disappointing departure from the UEFA Cup after a 3–2 aggregate defeat to Racing Strasbourg of France.
Please accept my apologies for the language amongst my scribbles. I’m on the verge of hanging up my scrapbooking scissors and I’ve run out of Tippex! Two weeks as we cross from November into December as the Reds in yellow pick up 4 points from 6 on the road in London but are pathetically poor at home to Manchester United in a 3–1 defeat.
Between the win at Newcastle on 28th December 1997 to this 2–0 home win over Wimbledon on 10th January 1998 the Reds were dumped out of the FA Cup at the first hurdle by Coventry City (in front of just 33,888 at Anfield) and returned to Tyneside to knock Newcastle out of the Coca-Cola League Cup. It was that sort of season.
Two very differing league draws: 0–0 with Blackburn Rovers on 31st January and a 3–3 draw away at Sheffield Wednesday a fortnight later. Michael Owen performed his own individual St Valentines Day massacre on the hosts with a hat-trick, but it was still only good enough for 1 point.
And my final game and final cuttings from this season, a 5–0 pounding of West Ham United in front of a near capacity Anfield crowd of 44,414. The Reds finished 3rd but a distant 13 points off League Champions Arsenal and suffered some incredibly disappointing exits from all cup competitions. The bright light ahead was their progression in league placing and reduction of the points gap between themselves and the Champions.
Season 1998/1999 and August 1998 wrapped up in two scrapbook pages! 7 points out of a possible 9 and Michael Owen running riot at St James’ Park with a 15 minute hat-trick against Newcastle United in a 4–1 win in front of 36,740.
West Ham United (2) Liverpool (1) 12th September 1998, and the Reds first defeat of the season.
1–0 down, 2–1 down and then 3–2 up with a second goal from Robbie Fowler but Charlton Athletic equalise within a minute and the Reds drop valuable home points with a 3–3 draw in front of an Anfield crowd of 44,526.
17th October through to 3rd November 1998: 0–0 draw with neighbours Everton (top left) is followed by another 0–0 draw, this time at Anfield and against the sleeping Spanish giants of Valencia in the 1st Leg of the 2nd Round of the UEFA Cup followed by Michael Owen’s four goals in a 5–1 defeat of Nottingham Forest. Fulham were beaten in the League Cup, the Reds lost 1–0 away at Leicester City in the league before travelling to Spain and getting a bloodied and bruised 2–2 draw with Valencia to progress in the UEFA Cup on the away goals rule.
More from both the aforementioned games with Valencia and Leicester City. The “brawl” spoken about in the headlines could just have been referring to the recriminations behind the scenes at the club as apocryphal stories abound of a huge bust up between the joint managers of Roy Evans and Gerard Houllier. The “joint manager” situation was ridiculous and rather an embarrassing stain on the club at the time.
The cuttings propel us forward to the new year of 1999 and a 3–0 away win at Port Vale in the FA Cup 3rd Round, a 0–0 draw in the league away at Highbury against Arsenal and a 7–1 thrashing of Southampton on 16th January. As the headline of “Local Heroes” suggest, 44,011 at Anfield saw 5 local or academy graduates scoring all 7 goals, with “God” bagging a hat-trick. Since the triumph in Spain over Valencia the Reds had played 12 league and cup games, losing 7 and winning 5, however 2 of these losses were to Spanish opponents Celta Vigo (3–1 and 1–0) and were dumped out of the UEFA Cup.
After a steadying run of form, the Reds end the month of January out of the FA Cup (and out of luck) and defeated 2–1 at home by Coventry City.
And here we have the final ever cutting I made in a scrapbook! 6th February to 13th March 1999 and the first of my two future trips to Pride Park, the new home of Derby County. But fear not dear reader, I may have hung up my scrapbooking scissors but there was still a little Pritt Stick glue to go around for a wee while yet.
So I had some glue left over and for a few seasons I repeated this silly (in retrospect) behaviour as I now have glued tickets, loose tickets and a bunch of missing tickets. A mess of a full house on the tickets front. Alas! Here’s part one of two for the 1999/2000 season and a pre-season trip to a fully seated Molineux, home of nearby Wolverhampton Wanderers, and the first visit here in many, many years and my first opportunity to meet the members of the local Supporters Club. The club was run brilliantly by a young man named Dave who liked me a lot (or should I say I was more than happy to drive?) and he kindly put me on the 1st row of the Upper Anfield Road and what a spectacular view of Anfield that affords you. The first of many “Thanks Dave” here. Thanks Dave. Plus early season singular trips to Yorkshire for my second visits to both Hillsborough and Elland Road.
Season 1999/2000 Part 2: and a final trip to Highbury (£18.00!), yet another trip to Selhurst Park and my third Goodison Derby courtesy of Dave (thanks Dave!). However, the seat was quite literally smack behind a supporting beam of the stand (thanks Dave).
In this crazy 11 part odyssey I have learned many things but the two most infuriating are (1) I’m missing a scrapbook from the 1986/87 season and (2) I’m missing a box of programmes from the glorious 2001 Treble season onward and which covers these final pieces of the jigsaw here. Damn.
Part 1 of my 33 appearances(!) during the glorious treble winning season of 2000/2001. Apologies for the red ink scrawl again. Top left is a ticket from the previous season as Dave and I (thanks Dave!) journeyed to Bradford City in search of European Cup football on the last day of the previous season. Another trip to Pride Park, Derby County and only the second time I’ve ever mingled with the “home” fans and couldn’t stop jumping up and celebrating when Patrik Berger made it 4–0 with a brilliant finish after a 20+ pass team move. It was mostly empty seats around me by then. And the (in)famous trip to Stoke City in the League Cup when the hosts hit the post in the 1st minute with an open goal gaping wide, before the Reds responded by scoring 8 (EIGHT).
Part 2 of season 2000/2001 and only one “away”, and another trip to Elland Road and this time a brilliant 2–0 win in the FA Cup in an otherwise dreadful game (thanks Dave!). The “big game” tickets are kept together in a bundle and away from the dreaded glue of a Pritt Stick.
Season 2001/2002 and *only* 26 appearances this time around for the near 30 year old with far too much time on his hands and too much access to gluing materials.
2001/2002 Part 2: and the first of two trips so far to Southampton’s new home of St Mary’s. If you’ve read every blog hence far you’ll be aware that “Southampton Away” was a given nearly every season from 1985 onward and (not recorded here) every game at The Dell dating back to 1982/83 and the “Steve Moran” Saints tickets. I’ve travelled to Southampton in search of Liverpool victories nearly 20 times, but until 1999 it was only a 35 minute train ride away. Please see link below for my special edition blog entitled “A Lifetime of Southampton Away”.
Season 2002/2003 and the bottom right ticket is particularly special as the game itself was held back due to crowd congestion until 9.30/9.45pm and then the game was veering into extra-time and way into the next morning when Danny Murphy scored the winner in a crazy 4–3 win in the League Cup at Villa Park.
And then, dear reader, the glue finally ran out and I abruptly stopped with three months of the season to go. No more cuttings. No more gluing of tickets. No more red pen etchings. It’s been a memory inducing ride.
Part 1. A couple of programmes and tickets missing (damn), but I was a lucky boy for a lot of years and a lot of memories were made along the way.
Part 2. A couple of programmes and tickets missing (damn), but I was a lucky boy for a lot of years and a lot of memories were made along the way.
Part 3. A couple of programmes and tickets missing (damn), but I was a lucky boy for a lot of years and a lot of memories were made along the way.
Part 4. A couple of programmes and tickets missing (damn), but I was a lucky boy for a lot of years and a lot of memories were made along the way.
I sincerely hope you’ve enjoyed this final ramble along “Scrapbook Lane” and if you have, or indeed had a memory jogged of a particular game, the city of Liverpool or the twisted fates of a life’s journey, please consider the previously and recently released season by season “Scrapbook Lane” editions below and my special edition of “A Lifetime of Southampton Away”.
Thank you sincerely for reading and similar thanks for sharing this journey with the 8 year old kid in the “Hitachi” Liverpool shirt, staring wistfully out of the window and daydreaming of following his football team someday.
