5 reasons behind the Manchester United-Liverpool rivalry

#1 The sense of enmity was drilled into both sets of players

Both sets of players had the sense of animosity drilled into them

A defeat at Liverpool saw United lose out on the title in April 1992, stretching their title drought to 25 years. One of the certainties from that day is that Ferguson never forgot the chants of ‘f*** you’ emanating from the Liverpool dressing room. The following season, he pinned a picture of Dante’s ‘Inferno’ on the dressing room wall, showing the distraught faces of the players on the bench and swore he would never let it happen again.

The incredibly successful generation of Manchester United players that delivered all those trophies had one common theme; Ferguson drilled a hatred of Liverpool into them right from the start. Gary Neville once said, ‘I can’t stand Liverpool, I can’t stand Liverpool people, I can’t stand anything to do with them.’

A young Steven Gerrard was instilled with the same hatred by his dad, learning the hard way after he’d apparently tried on a Bryan Robson shirt. Gerrard could be quoted as having said, ‘My dad looked out and went ballistic, he wasn’t having his kid drag the Gerrard name through the gutter, and I thought I would have to move.’ Of course, the Liverpool icon took this to heart and has never swapped shirts with a Manchester United player in his career.