Liverpool’s Carabao League Cup match away to Lincoln City tomorrow evening got me trawling through the history books for previous clashes between the clubs. And along the way I also stumbled across a few random points of Lincolnian interest.
Firstly, Lincoln biscuits (a
1980s childhood delicacy when served with butter and jam) are now apparently available only/mainly in Ireland, being made by Jacobs. Their actual connection
with the city of Lincoln is unclear.
A Lincoln biscuit with its characteristic raised dots
And the distinctive packaging...
And speaking of tenuous links with Ireland, there is also the etymological connection between Lincoln and Dublin, both containing the old Celtic word for ‘pool’ (i.e. lin or linn), with Dublin being a black (Dubh) pool and Lincoln being simply ‘the’ pool. Incidentally, the origin of Liverpool’s name comes from a pool of thick or muddy water.
Also of historical interest
and with another vaguely 1980s connection is the Gremlin like Lincoln Imp, a 'grotesque' that is to be found on Lincoln Cathedral and that somehow manages to
make its way on to the crest of Lincoln City Football Club.
The Lincoln Imp, to be found within Lincoln Cathedral and on the crest of Lincoln City Football Club
Lincoln City's grotesque home jersey for 2020-2021
But back to football. Liverpool
have played Lincoln City on 23 occasions in their history, including Liverpool's first ever Football League game at Anfield in 1893, when they beat Lincoln City 4-0. In total, Liverpool have won 13 of their matches against Lincoln City, drawing 5 and losing 5. Twenty of those encounters were league games, with
three in the FA Cup. Of the league games, all were played in the Second
Division, with six played in the first two decades of Liverpool’s history and the other 14 played between 1954 and 1960. This was the darkest footballing
era for Liverpool FC, and worse even than the 1930s, also
a trophy-less decade but at least First Division
status was maintained throughout https://sportyman2020.blogspot.com/2020/09/liverpool-fc-in-1930s-great-footballing.html.
So, with no offence intended
to Lincoln City, Liverpool returning there tomorrow night is likely to awaken dark and
traumatic 1950s memories for any Liverpool fans old enough to remember when
this was a regular Second Division fixture.
For the three previous
seasons when Liverpool had started in the Second Division (1893-1894, 1895-1896
and 1904-1905), they managed to win the division and obtain immediate
promotion. But the 1950s was to be different. After being relegated in
1953-1954, Liverpool dropped to an 11th place finish in Division Two
in 1954-1955 and at one time looked at risk of falling into the third tier of
English football. At the risk of overdoing the linn-related references, the
Second Division became a pool of quicksand for Liverpool for eight seasons.
As you can see from the 1950s
summary stats at the end of this blog, the ignominy of Second Division football
for Liverpool for six seasons of the decade (and two seasons of the 1960s) was compounded by
the concurrent successes of clubs that would become Liverpool’s greatest domestic and European
rivals.
So while Liverpool suffered
relegation in 1953-1954 and a subsequent protracted battle to get back to the
First Division, their (in recent decades at least) fiercest rivals Manchester
United won the First Division three times in the decade (1951-1952, 1955-1956
and 1956-1957) thus catching up with Liverpool’s total of five top flight
titles. To add insult to injury, United got to strut their stuff in the newly
established European club competition, known then as the European Cup and known
now as the UEFA Champions League.
United even managed two European
Cup semi-final appearances in the late 1950s, but the competition was
completely dominated by Real Madrid in those early years, with the Spaniards
winning the first five consecutive titles, between 1955 and 1960.
And when Real Madrid took that
fifth European title in 1960 they would have known little of the still sleeping
giants then stuck in the English Second Division who would ultimately rise
again and beat them in the 1981 European Cup final to win their own third European
title.
Liverpool's ill fated 1953-1954 team - they would end the season 22nd and bottom of the First Division and thus relegated. Notable players include future managers Phil Taylor (standing on extreme left) and Bob Paisley (sitting on extreme right), along with Billy Liddell who is seated directly beside Paisley.
Back row: Eddie Spicer, Charlie Ashcroft and Ray Lambert.
Middle row: Phil Taylor, Sammy Smith, Laurie Hughes, Louis Bimpson, Joseph Maloney, Roy Saunders, Alan A'Court
Front row: Jimmy Payne, Kevin Baron, Bill Jones, Billy Liddell and Bob Paisley
The
1950s: one Liverpool hero at least
Throughout those dark days
of Second Division football, Liverpool had at least one stalwart player, who showed great loyalty in sticking with the club and who would go
on to achieve legendary status.
Billy Liddell was a Scottish
forward who played exclusively with Liverpool for his entire professional career,
stretching from before World War II in July 1938 right through to those grim
Second Division years of the 1950s and on to the very beginning of the Shankly era. During the 1950s, Liddell was top scorer for six seasons and captain
for three of those. Matt Busby, one time Liverpool player and captain and
subsequently quite successful manager of another club, is said to have tipped off
Liverpool manager Gorge Kay to Liddell, saying ‘this Liddell lad might be worth
an enquiry’. As stipulated by his parents, Liddell was contractually allowed to
complete his training as an accountant while playing with Liverpool, thus
having another career to fall back on after football. In fact, he continued to
work as an accountant throughout his Liverpool playing career.
Liddell was extremely
strong, fast and versatile, playing as a left sided winger and centre forward
and scoring 215 league goals in 492 matches. At the time of his retirement his
534 appearances was a club record for Liverpool, and he is currently 12th
on that particular metric, and 4th on the all time top goalscorer
table. He also managed 29 caps for Scotland. Had it not been for the
interruption of World War II, when he served in the Royal Air Force, Liddell’s
stats could have been even more impressive.
In The Anatomy of Liverpool
(Jonathan Wilson and Scott Murray) Liddell is highlighted as being one of five
key era defining players for Liverpool, coming after Alex Raisbeck https://sportyman2020.blogspot.com/2020/08/liverpool-fc-third-decade-1910-1920.html and Elisha Scott https://sportyman2020.blogspot.com/2020/09/two-titles-two-irishmen-and-two-macs.html and before Kenny Dalglish and Steven Gerrard. Such
was his importance to the club that Liverpool got the nickname of ‘Liddellpool’
during his career. Accounts of his contemporaries describe a quiet and
religious man who did his talking on the pitch.
Although he had only a brief spell playing with Bill Shankly as Liverpool manager, Shankly was well aware of Liddell’s talents and importance to Liverpool, describing him as ‘fast, powerful, shot with either foot and his headers were like blasts from a gun. On top of all that he was as hard as granite. What a player! He was so strong – and he took a nineteen-inch collar shirt’.
The
darkest hour is just before the dawn
So Liverpool spent the
second half of the 1950s getting close to
but never quite making promotion back to the First Division.
A footballing nadir was
reached in January 1959 when (with Billy Lidddell dropped for the game)
Liverpool lost in the 3rd round of the FA Cup to Southern League team Worcester City, a defeat that may well have spurred the Liverpool board to look
for a replacement for manager Phil Taylor.
The Liverpool board found
their replacement later in 1959 when they lured a fast talking and ambitious
but as yet unproven young manager from Huddersfield Town to Liverpool. Within a
few years he would transform Liverpool Football Club and bring them back to the
very top table of English and ultimately European football.
The darkest hour is before dawn - Worcester City knock Liverpool
out of the FA Cup in January 1959
A new dawn arrives - Bill Shankly signing as manager of Liverpool Football Club on December 1st 1959
Munich
air disaster
Finally, the 1950s football
related tribulations for Liverpool paled in comparison to the tragedy for
Manchester United of the Munich Air Disaster in February 1958. Former Liverpool
player and captain Matt Busby had assembled an extraordinarily talented young
team who had come to be known as the Busby Babes, winning consecutive First Division titles and performing well in Europe. Eight of the team (along with fifteen others) were killed as a result of the crash, including 22 year old Irishman Liam Whelan. Among the survivors were Bobby Charlton and Matt Busby himself.
Liverpool
FC in the 1950s: summary of a decade of footballing darkness
(Top scorer is based on
combined league and FA Cup goals)
1950-1951
Manager: George Kay
Captain: Phil Taylor
League: 9th in
Division 1 (winners: Tottenham Hostpur, their 1st win)
FA Cup: 3rd round
(winners Newcastle United, their 4th win)
Top scorer: Billy Liddell
(15)
1951-1952
Manager: George Kay,
succeeded by Don Welsh
Captain: Phil Taylor
League: 11th in
Division 1 (winners: Manchester United, their 3rd win)
FA Cup: 5th round
(winners: Newcastle United, their 5th win)
Top scorer: Billy Liddell
(19)
1952-1953
Manager: Don Welsh
Captain: Phil Taylor
League: 17th in
Division 1 (winners: Arsenal, a record 7th win)
FA Cup: 3rd round
(winners: Blackpool, their first win)
Top scorer: Billy Liddell
(13)
1953-1954
Manager: Don Welsh
Captain: Bill Jones
League: 22nd in
Division 1 and relegated (winners: Wolverhampton Wanderers, their first win)
FA Cup: 3rd round
(winners: West Bromwich Albion, their 4th win)
Top scorer: Sammy Smyth (13)
1954-1955
Manager: Don Welsh
Captain: Laurie Hughes
League: 11th in
Division 2 (winners of Second Division: Birmingham City. Chelsea won the First
Division for the first time)
FA Cup: 5th round
(winners: Newcastle United, for a record 6th time)
Top scorer: John Evans (33)
1955-1956
Manager: Don Welsh
Captain: Billy Liddell
League: 3rd in
Division 2 (winners of Second Division: Sheffield Wednesday. Manchester United
won the First Division for the 4th time)
FA Cup: 5th round
(winners: Manchester City, their 3rd win)
Top scorer: Billy Liddell
(32)
European Cup: first
championship and won by Real Madrid with Hibernian of Scotland the only British
representatives, reaching the semi-finals.
1956-1957
Manager: Phil Taylor
Captain: Billy Liddell
League: 3rd in
Division 2 (winners of Division 2: Leicester City. Manchester United won First
Division for the 5th time).
FA Cup: 3rd round
(winners: Aston Villa, their 7th win)
Top scorer: Billy Liddell
(21)
European Cup: the second
year of the competition and again won by Real Madrid, with Manchester United
reaching the semi-finals
1957-1958
Manager: Phil Taylor
Captain: Billy Liddell
League: 4th in
Division 2 (West Ham United won Division 2, with Wolves winning the First
Division for the 2nd time)
FA Cup: Quarter final
(winners: Bolton Wanderers, their 4th win)
Top scorer: Billy Liddell
(23)
European Cup: the third year
of the competition and again won by Real Madrid, with Manchester United again
reaching the semi-finals
1958-1959
Manager: Phil Taylor
Captain: Johnny Wheeler
League: 4th in
Division 2 (winners: Sheffield Wednesday, Wolves won the First Division for the
second time).
FA Cup: 3rd round
(winners: Nottingham Forest, their 2nd win)
Top scorer: Jimmy Melia (21)
European Cup: Real Madrid
continue their complete dominance of the competition with their 4th
win. Wolves exited after the first round.
1959-1960
Manager: Phil Taylor,
succeeded by Bill Shankly
Captain: Ronnie Moran
League: 3rd in
Division 2 (winners: Aston Villa. Burnley won the First Division for the second
time)
FA Cup: 4th round
(winners: Wolverhampton Wanderers, their 4th win)
Top scorer: Roger Hunt (23)
European Cup: Real Madrid
remained the only winners to date, with their 5th consecutive win.
Wolves reached the quarter finals
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