Liverpool: Ronnie Whelan on the three decade wait for another league title

It was 28 April, 1989. Player manager Kenny Dalglish embraced his players on the pitch at Anfield having just clinched their 18th league title.

The match commentator that day summed it up with this: “Within hours they’ll be thinking about how to win next year’s title.”

It made a lot of sense back then because winning titles had become the norm. Nobody in that stadium that day could have dreamed it would be three decades before a Liverpool team would win the league again and that they’d do it in such alien circumstances.

Of the current regular starters, only James Milner, Adam Lallana and reserve keeper known simply as Adrián, were actually born when the team of 89/90 lifted the old first division trophy.

1990 really was a different era – the Hillsborough tragedy had happened just a year earlier and Margaret Thatcher was still in power.

It was still known simply as the “first division” – no Premier League marketing, no need for financial fair play rules – they didn’t even have shirts with the player’s surnames printed on the back.

The football-mad children of that era didn’t have “at home” TikTok videos to keep track of their heroes. We had football stickers – the currency of the playground.

My album from 1989 – the year when Liverpool started out on that last title-winning season – has always had one gap. Despite repeated trips to different newsagents, I somehow never found Ronnie Whelan.

So as Liverpool closed in on the league in early 2020, I asked Panini if it could help us out all these years on and allow us to complete the page. Within a week or two they’d found the old template and sent over the missing Ronnie Whelan sticker.

Three decades on, and the former Republic of Ireland international midfielder agreed to stick it in for us at his home which is still on Merseyside.

“We were always the same,” he told us, recalling the culture at the club back then.

“The dinner lady, whoever, the cleaner, we were all part of this family. It looks like Klopp has done the very same thing that went back to Shankly and Bob [Paisley] and Kenny [Dalglish].

“They want everyone to be involved and everyone to enjoy it… if you can’t enjoy this Liverpool team you can’t enjoy football because they have played some of the greatest football any Liverpool team has ever played.”

In his day, Whelan was part of a formidable line up of midfielders at Anfield.

Steve McMahon, Jan Molby, Steve Nicol and Ray Houghton were a fundamental part of the club’s success at the end of the 80s – allowing John Barnes, Peter Beardsley, John Aldridge and Ian Rush to take many of the headlines up front.

Rush, the club’s all-time record goal scorer, says there was always something missing when Ronnie Whelan was missing.

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The 58-year-old was at the heart of an all-conquering Liverpool team and Whelan sees it again in this COVID-19 disrupted season, saying: “Teams like Liverpool have played like they have done this season deserve to win leagues. They have got to win more though.”

The standards and expectations of 30 years ago were high – they don’t diminish with age.

Whelan said: “That team in 89/90, when they won the league that year… that was the sixth [title] in 10 years. Can they sustain it?

“And then become comparable with the teams that we had in the 80s and the managers that we had – Shankly, Paisley, Dalglish – can Klopp become that good?

“I believe they can – if they all stick together.”

The long wait for the league title had been stretched even further by COVID-19 – it has happened behind closed doors.

Such is Jurgen Klopp’s commitment to this club, he will probably follow the prediction of that commentator back in 1990 – enjoying the moment – but quickly resuming preparations for next season.

(c) Sky News 2020: Liverpool: Ronnie Whelan on the three decade wait for another league title