We'd Won It Five Times - Before Shankly.

The Five Pioneering Champions of Liverpool Football Club.

King Billy Liddell of Liddellpool

You know the early story. About the original occupants of Anfield were Everton, who moved there in 1884.

You know it was the split of Everton Football Club that led to the establishment of Liverpool Football Club.

You probably also know that the Anfield and therefore Everton landlord was a wealthy local brewer and politician (and staunch Everton supporter) called John Houlding. He was instrumental in Everton becoming one of the original 12 members of the Football League, and also in the formation of Liverpool Football Club.

You may well be aware that Everton and Anfield went their separate ways when the Everton Football Committee and John Houlding fell out over the latter’s proposed rent rises, and that Everton left to form their own club up the road, leaving John Houlding with a ground but no team.

You know he decided to stay behind and form one, initially by bringing in a lot of Scots, and that Liverpool Football Club was formed in 1892, with the players getting changed for the match in the Sandon pub near the Kop and walking down to the ground to play.

Nine years later, just nine years after their admission to the league, they won it for the first time.

What you may not know is the details, the managers and players, behind that and the four other champion teams that preceded the arrival of Bill Shankly and what is perceived by most Liverpool fans as the club’s defining moment and the birth of the modern Liverpool.

This is the story of those early, pre-Shankly champions.

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