The History of Liverpool Football Club

The Football League was founded in 1888 and Anfield was one of their original grounds, and Everton FC won the League Championship there in 1891. Everton left Anfield in a dispute with chairman John Houlding over rent ? in 1884 Everton were paying £100 but by 1889/90 he was charging them £250. The majority of the players and the board left to build a new ground but he, John Houlding, the Mayor of Liverpool, stayed behind and created Liverpool Football Club.

Liverpool F.C. was formed on the 15th of March 1892 at John Houlding's house in Anfield Road with his closest friends left from Everton FC. He had basically been left with an empty ground so had to form a new team to play in it! The Clubs initial application to join the Football League was rejected so they played their first match in September 1892 at Anfield against Rotherham in the Lancashire League. Houlding adopted the city's colour of red and by 1901 they were using the Liverbird as their crest. It was 'Honest' John McKenna who did most of the team building work, recruiting over a dozen players from Scotland, and is highly regarded as the brain behind the early success of the Club.

By the end of their first season Liverpool had taken the League as well as the Liverpool District Cup and Everton were getting worried. By the end of 1900/01 season the players and directors of LFC were proudly made their way back to Anfield by horse-drawn carriage with the League Championship trophy for the first, but by no means the last time.

The team played their first Wembley final in 1950, with Arsenal as opposition but sadly they were defeated 2-0, which made their wait for FA Cup glory even longer, but the fans continued to be as supportive as ever. Bill Shankly moved the team from second division mediocrity when he took over as manager in 1959, and he remained the manager until 1974. The Club finally won the FA Cup in 1965 which was an event so sought after it was joked that the mythical Liver Birds would fly from their perch the day a Liverpool team brought home the FA Cup. They went on to win the European Cup in 1977.

Tragedy struck in Brussels when Liverpool were playing Juventus in the European Cup final when 28 Italians and one Belgian died when supporter chaos occurred, resulting in a crush and a wall collapsing on top of them. 1985/86 started in misery but ended a lot better by winning a 16th championship crown. Disaster struck again for the team in 1989 when 250,000 supporters travelled to Hillsborough to watch the FA Cup semi-final with Nottingham Forest. 96 of these supporters were crushed to death in the Leppings Lane end just after kick off.

Liverpool Football Club have battled against the odds for the entire running of their club, but this is one of the reasons why they have such a dedicated fan base ? having gone through some horrendous tragedy, they always go on to triumph over adversity, and proved this yet again when they won the Champions League in 2005 and the FA Cup in 2006.