D
efending a league title is never easy. In the past
decade, only the Manchester City team of 2017/18
and 2018/19 has managed it, the latter after they
needed an exceptional campaign to hold off the
relentless challenge of Jürgen Klopp’s Reds.
Forty years ago Bob Paisley’s Liverpool side were on their
way to retaining the top-flight championship after a tight
race with Dave Sexton’s Manchester United. Kopites enjoyed
celebrating the triumph every bit as much as they should have
done and yet, with time, the team’s exploits that season have
perhaps fallen a little off the radar.
When football historians look back on the all-conquering
Liverpool teams of the Seventies they tend to think of Bill
Shankly’s class of 1972/73 that won the Division One title and
the UEFA Cup.
They recall Bob Paisley’s side of 1975/76 that matched that
achievement, and the one of the following season that landed
the league title again and the club’s first European Cup.
They think of the 1978/79 team that reclaimed the league
crown from Brian Clough’s Nottingham Forest, going
unbeaten at Anfield throughout the 42-match campaign and
conceded just 16 goals while using only 15 players.
So the 1979/80 side’s achievement in retaining the title
while again going unbeaten on home soil is one which perhaps
suffers in comparison because of the exploits of those others.
Yet this was Liverpool’s record-breaking 12th league
championship and the one that allowed supporters to proudly
say that the Redmen were the most successful team in
England – a boast of course which they can make again today
after Klopp’s men won the FIFA World Club Cup in December
2019 to take their major trophy count to 47 in comparison to
Manchester United’s 45.Back to 1979 and pre-season had been a relatively quiet
affair with the only piece of LFC transfer business being the
recruitment of Israeli full-back Avi Cohen from Maccabi Tel
Aviv for a fee of £200,000.
Striker Frank McGarvey had been brought in from St Mirren
the previous May to bolster the attacking options available to
Paisley but the move didn’t work out and the Scot failed to
break into the Liverpool line-up.
Barely a week before the season started with the regular
claiming of the Charity Shield – a 3-1 win over Arsenal at
Wembley – Paisley took the hard decision to sanction the sale
of one of the club’s great servants, Emlyn Hughes, to Wolves.
Young Scottish star Alan Hansen had taken the place of
‘Crazy Horse’ at centre-half and although Hughes could also
deputise for Alan Kennedy at left-back, the arrival of Cohen
meant he felt the time was right to move on after twelve-and-
a-half seasons at Anfield which had seen him lift the European
Cup on two occasions.
The biggest off-field news story around Liverpool FC that
summer was the announcement that the club had signed
a lucrative one-year shirt-sponsorship deal with Japanese
electronics firm Hitachi.
In doing so the Reds became the first club in England to
play with a sponsor’s logo emblazoned across their shirts.
Derby County had signed the first-ever shirt sponsorship deal
in 1977 but were only allowed to wear the shirts in pre-season
friendlies under Football League rules.
The deal didn’t go down well with many Kopites flooding
the Liverpool Echo with letters of complaint. After the 3-2
defeat at Southampton in which, ironically, the team didn’t
carry the Hitachi logo (they didn’t have a set of yellow shirts
with it printed upon) the newspaper’s Michael Charters wasQATAR TREK“It goes back there in the trophy cabinet
when we’ve finished this lap of honour”