A record to forget - Liverpool’s only yo-yo.

Below is a summary of the full article. Click here for the full version from LFC History or go back to LFC Live.

Liverpool Echo report on Liverpool - Newton Heath (future Manchester United) in April 1894. As a result of knocking Newton Heath into Division 2, the system was then blamed for giving the city two clubs while depriving Manchester of any first-class football! * Liverpool’s own distinctive passage through the ‘dreaded ordeal’ of the 1890s’ tests began at Blackburn on 28 April 1894.

The opponent for Liverpool’s second test match was Bury, who had finished with a nine-point lead in Division 2. Even the Birmingham Mail had to confess that the opening game at Anfield, which Liverpool won 4-0, had not gone well. ‘The Small Heath forwards seldom crossed the half-way line, and the Liverpool team did almost as they liked with their visitors.’ There is a long account of the game in the Liverpool Daily Post and (in lfchistory.net) Liverpool Mercury. ‘An easy victory’ according to the Athletic News. ‘The Small Heath forwards ‘were very ineffective…….

They were evenly balanced as well….’ The Preston Herald went further in an extraordinary comment, claiming that the referee ‘after the match remarked that the exposition of Small Heath on Saturday was about the worst he had seen from them this season, and warned the Liverpool men not to indulge in too much clever work on the peculiar ground of the Midland club on Monday, but to start in the same determined manner in which they opened the game at Anfield on Saturday.’ The return match at Coventry Road, two days later, was a goalless draw, with Small Heath improving on their earlier game but not to the extent that the Liverpool backs and especially keeper Storer could be beaten. Liverpool was one of several clubs which appeared more than once in the test match system; two, indeed (Newton Heath and Notts County) appeared more than Liverpool’s three.