OPINION: ANFIELD TRIPS CAN BE HARD TO ENJOY

OPINION: ANFIELD TRIPS CAN BE HARD TO ENJOY

I have the opinion that any Manchester United who suffered the agony of the 1992 defeat to Liverpool at Anfield, and the context of that 2-0 loss, will always treat any trip to Merseyside with, if not trepidation, then certainly a sense the game can be difficult to enjoy.

Personally, I find them incredibly tense. For fans of my age, Liverpool will always be our fiercest rivals. Growing up, most of the other kids at school supported the team that seemed to win everything, which is only natural, and this was difficult to take for any United follower.
We may have performed well in meetings with a side often head and shoulders above the rest of the old Division One but their success was hard to take. I recall the 1983 Milk Cup final, in extra time, being particularly galling. We hadn't won anything since I started supporting the club and it seemed like they were being greedy hoovering up the old League Cup with monotonous regularity (this was the third triumph in a four-year winning stretch).
Mercifully, that first piece of silverware for me as a United supporter was only a couple of months away but the one I wanted, and I think everybody wanted, was the league title. My father and many, many others had been waiting since 1967 to see the Reds win the championship again and it was becoming an albatross for the club, plus another reason for Liverpool's fans to, understandably, gloat.
Fast forward to 1992 and all that was finally going to change. Liverpool finally seemed a fading force. Yes, they had won the league by nine points in 1990 but chinks in the armour were starting to show. The defeat to Crystal Palace in the FA Cup semi-final that season, on the same day as United's 3-3 draw with Oldham Athletic on a crazy first occasion of the games being shown live one after another on TV, had been a ray of hope that their years of dominance were going to come to an end.
Arsenal were champions in 1991, with Liverpool second, and their 3-1 win at Highbury over Alex Ferguson's men in May did show their own capabilities but the Scot was clearly building something special at Old Trafford and we had bigger fish to fry. Like winning the European Cup-Winners' Cup in unforgettable fashion in Rotterdam.
So United seemed primed for a proper tilt at that elusive title in the final year of the old Division One and confirmed a superiority over Leeds, who were also competing for top spot, during three winter games in 1991 (a draw in the league and two wins in the cups at Elland Road). This was going to be it, the monkey would be off our back and I distinctly remember some newspapers proclaiming this was to mark the start of our own period of dominance, akin to the one Liverpool had enjoyed.
That seemed premature to me at the time, even after landing the Rumbelows Cup, but, with Liverpool out of the race (they ultimately finished sixth) and Arsenal eventually finishing fourth (behind Sheffield Wednesday), clearly our time had come. Except, hampered by a ridiculous fixture pile-up - partly a consequence of knocking Leeds out of those domestic cups - Ferguson's men faltered and it all unravelled in the most painful of ways.
I harboured some hope Sheffield United would do us a favour in the earlier kick-off on Sunday 26 April 1992. It was a Yorkshire derby, after all, and they were top-half finishers. Indeed, Alan Cork gave the Blades the lead but Leeds' equaliser has to be seen to be believed. Bad defending does not even begin to explain it. With the scores later tied at 2-2, it got worse. Former City defender Brian Gayle scored an own goal that, again, defies a rational explanation. Okay, I'll try. He knees the ball high in the air while retreating towards Mel Rees and then outjumps his own keeper to head into the net.
If I remember rightly, listening on the radio, Brian Deane spurned several clear-cut chances to thwart Leeds. He would later join the Elland Road club but had played a big part in getting them over the line here. It left United facing the inevitable with two games to go and preparing for a contest at the worst place on earth to be at that moment in time, at Anfield.
The home fans among the 38,669 in attendance mocked their rivals throughout, knowing our race was run. Watching it on TV alongside Liverpool supporters was horrible but it must have been totally unbearable for those in the away end that day. The hosts made the most of the opportunity to compound the agony and Ian Rush, who had never scored against us, took only 12 minutes to put them ahead. Even that satisfying stat, and something used to downplay his other achievements, had been shot down.
Liverpool won comfortably, 2-0 in the end, but the second half appeared to last an eternity. The wait for a league title was now a quarter of a century, 25 years, and it had never appeared further away, to me anyway. Would we ever be top dogs in the country again?
I'm sure the mental scars from that day are still with me and it is why I dread United going to Anfield, despite everything that has happened since. Sir Alex tells the story of using that adversity to bounce back even stronger, a trait I find remarkable in him and his teams, but, at the time, it was the cruellest of blows and a chastening experience.
So I never actually look forward to this fixture. Yet winning it, as we have done 12 times since 1992, is the sweetest thing imaginable and only partly because of that nadir 25 years ago. Let's hope for a positive outcome on Saturday.
The opinions in this story are personal to the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of Manchester United Football Club.