If football had not ground to a halt, it may not be the last time the title was won at Anfield. Instead, the only Premier League crown earned at Liverpool’s historic home was determined 25 years ago.
It is a quarter of a century since Jamie Redknapp’s last-minute free kick went in. Everyone could celebrate. Liverpool had won the game, but Blackburn Rovers had won the league.
“Because of the Liverpool fans’ relationship with our manager, it was like we won the title at home,” recalled the former Rovers left winger Jason Wilcox. “It was a very surreal day.”
It remains a rare achievement. Look at the list of the Premier League champions and only Leicester have joined Blackburn among the anomalies, the provincial clubs surrounded by the giants from the big cities.
With Rovers 10th in the Championship, having played in League One more recently than the Premier League, it feels a different era.
Yet there was something anachronistic about it then. They had not been champions since 1914 or won any major silverware since 1928. “We were in Division Two when Don Mackay gave me his debut,” said Wilcox.
Rovers’ horizons had expanded in the late 1980s with the glamorous additions of Steve Archibald and Ossie Ardiles.
Then the catalysts for a transformation assumed control: Jack Walker, the lifelong fan and steel magnate who bought the club, and his first managerial appointment, who joined in 1991, a few months after leaving Liverpool.
“Kenny Dalglish was the idol I had watched on television and then he was my boss,” said Wilcox. “It was incredible. We went on this journey. We only just scraped into the play-offs but we got promoted. Then we finished fourth in the Premier League and then second.”
That was in 1994, with Rovers behind only Sir Alex Ferguson’s first great Manchester United team.
They deposed them the next season. If the campaign is remembered for Eric Cantona kung-fu kicking a Crystal Palace supporter and incurring an eight-month ban, it is worth noting that Rovers were already league leaders.
They set a cracking pace, winning 25 of their first 36 league games. The other accusation was that Rovers bought the title. “We bought two superstars,” insists Wilcox.
Alan Shearer, at £3.3 million, was a British record buy. So was his £5m strike partner Chris Sutton. But Ian Pearce cost £300,000, Henning Berg and Tim Sherwood both came for £400,000 and Graeme Le Saux and Colin Hendry for £700,000 apiece.
Mark Atkins, who spent much of the season deputising for the injured David Batty in midfield, was a £45,000 bargain, courtesy of Mackay. The youth product Wilcox and the veteran Tony Gale, a free transfer, cost nothing. Potential was identified and unlocked.
“Kenny was buying players on the cheap,” Wilcox said. “Colin Hendry was not playing at Manchester City. Kenny was very strategic in the way he put that team together.
"We had a group of players that hadn't won a lot. We had a mixture of youth and experience.
"Kenny had assembled a team of players who had not had the best time at their previous clubs and had a lot to prove. The team spirit was incredible.”
To modern eyes, parts of the formula feel old-fashioned. All bar one Berg goal came from British or Irish players.
Rovers played a brand of 4-4-2, with two physical strikers, two out-and-out wingers and no one remotely resembling a No. 10 or a playmaker.
They had more in common with 1980s sides than Arsene Wenger’s Arsenal Invincibles.
But Shearer was a phenomenon. He topped 30 goals in three successive Premier League seasons. “He was incredible,” said Wilcox, who was part of his supply line. “He could score every type of goal. He was extremely brave and courageous.
"He was very strong-minded but he knew that to score goals, he needed team-mates. We were creating chances for him all over the pitch. I knew if I put the ball in certain areas he would be on the end of it. That was Alan’s instinct.
"We worked really hard to create those connections. The whole team had a real sense of knowing of our team-mates and enhancing them. Every player helped each other.”
Sutton’s goals dried up after November but Shearer carried on scoring.
Perhaps that shortage of players with a title-winning past was a reason why Rovers stumbled in the run-in but their talisman’s 34th league goal of the 1994-95 season came at Anfield.
It put Blackburn, who had only won two of their previous five games, ahead. The injured Wilcox was an annoyed spectator as John Barnes equalised; in the end, United’s failure to win at West Ham meant Rovers’ defeat did not matter, but for much of a tense afternoon, they could not know that.
“When we didn't win for six games I got better press than ever,” Wilcox said. “I had played so much of the season and then to miss out I was extremely jealous, frustrated and proud. It was a day of real mixed emotions.”
He even tried to reject his reward for winning the title. “I didn't want my medal on the day,” he recalled. “Kenny and Tim Sherwood said: ‘Get yourself up there.’”
A quarter of a century later, he is glad he did. There can be something even more special about tasting glory at a club which is not accustomed to success.
“It will always have a special place in everyone's heart.” Wilcox said. “You put on the TV and see clips of games. You will always drift back and think about your career.
"Those experiences, you recall them all the time. It will always be there somewhere in the back of our minds. That was my first club. The staff behind the scenes were amazing. It was club-wide. It wasn't just the first team. That journey that every supporter and every staff member went on was just incredible.
"It is very difficult to put into words. When we do have a reunion it is with great memories. We forged great friendships.”
The disappointment is that it was so fleeting. Title winners who floundered in Europe tend to have a lesser place in history. Blackburn’s subsequent Champions League campaign is remembered for Batty and Le Saux’s on-pitch fight with each other with they were supposed to be taking on Spartak Moscow.
They propped up their group, their lone win coming after they had been eliminated.
Dalglish had already stood down. His assistant Ray Harford was “an unbelievable coach,” in Wilcox’s words, but a lesser manager.
Blackburn slipped to seventh in 1995-96, despite the brilliance of their top scorer. Shearer won the Golden Boot, then its Euro ’96 equivalent, before moving to Newcastle for a world record £15m. Rovers were relegated in 1999.
“We all felt we were going to carry on and win and got complacent,” Wilcox said. “The manager left, Alan left and it disintegrated as quickly as it was assembled. That was the biggest shame. We took our feet off the gas.
"We would all look back with real pride and a real sense of what happened and why didn't we continue to carry on and win.” But when they did win, they accomplished something that, 25 years on, still feels remarkable.
