What We Can Learn From the Last Liverpool Team to Win the Title - 30 Years On

The weekend of 9 May 2020 should have been an historic one for Liverpool FC.

The fact that it isn't? Well, that's through no fault of their own. Unlike in 2013, or indeed 2019, there is nothing Liverpool - 25 points clear at the top of the Premier League - could have done to ensure that they lifted the trophy this weekend.

They have been unplayable (Watford aside) since minute one, and even if they had taken maximum points - 87 instead of the 82 they have now - they would still have been a draw from mathematically claiming the title at the time football was paused in March.

Regardless of the situation, and their unwavering dominance, the Reds will have to wait just that little bit longer to clinch their first title of the modern era.

30 years ago, however, that would have seemed unthinkable. 28 April 1990 was the last day in which Liverpool won the league, but had you told Kenny Dalglish, John Barnes, Ian Rush or anyone else involved with the last title win that it would be three decades before they would do so again, they would have laughed in your face.

That team, after all, had shown a staggering mental strength, and a winning capacity that deemed it a crime to go a year without winning the big one - let alone 30. It came off the back of a decade in which they had won the league six times - a feat that no club in English football history has managed over a ten-year period.

The 1990 win, however - eventually secured when Barnes and Rush netted in a 2-1 win over QPR at Anfield - was significant for another reason. A reason which utterly dwarves the footballing concerns that normally take precedence.

It was the year that Liverpool players fought through the grief and mourning that followed the events of the Hillsborough disaster, and won it for the 96.

It was the year that saw Kenny Dalglish shoulder the responsibility to become the brave, stoic face of the club throughout its darkest hour, and in which a group of Liverpool players - far from the best group the club has put together in its long, illustrious history - did a grieving city proud.

From a footballing perspective, the comparisons between the last Liverpool team to win the league and the current group of players - who stand on the verge of ending that heinous barren run - are obvious. More poignant, however, are the parallels on a more sentimental level.

“The thought of training never entered my head,” John Aldridge wrote of the period in his 1999 'My Story' autobiography, as per Four Four Two. "I remember trying to go jogging but I couldn't run. There was a time when I wondered if I would ever muster the strength to play. I seriously considered retirement. I was learning about what was relevant in life.”

Those quotes come from Aldridge, who featured sparingly in what was his final season at Anfield, but could just as easily come from Jordan Henderson or any other Premier League player, preparing to return to action in the wake of the coronavirus pandemic.

They could have come from Jurgen Klopp, who spoke for the club shortly after it was announced that football in England was postponed back in March.

"I've said before that football always seems the most important of the least important things. Today, football and football matches really aren't important at all.

"The message from the team to our supporters is only about your well-being. Put your health first. Don't take any risk. Think about the vulnerable in our society and act where possible with compassion for them.

"Please look after yourselves and look out for each other."

30 years, a generation and one of the bleakest periods of the Liverpool's history might separate Hillsborough from the Covid-19 shutdown. They are connected by football; one of them won the league 30 years ago, the other will surely follow if and when football gets back underway.

More importantly, however, they are connected by an important message; compassion, wellbeing and life in general are incomparably paramount to football.

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