From creative wordplay on song lyrics to simply calling Man City ‘cheats’, the Reds fans went all out at Anfield.
It was billed as one of the most emotionally charged club football matches in recent years with Liverpool’s historically vocal and disapproving fans promising a hostile reception for Manchester City as the Blues played their first match after being found guilty of breaching the Premier League’s financial rules.
In the end, Manchester City walked away from it with three points in the bag and smiles on their faces but not without facing scorn from the Reds’ supporters at their famed Anfield Stadium in Liverpool.
The Blues evaded a much-anticipated “Anfield welcome” by avoiding the route usually taken by team buses driving into the venue. Instead, City’s bus was driven into the stadium via a different route and entrance, usually reserved for service vehicles on match days.
While Enzo Maresca’s team avoided the flares, pyrotechnics and attacks on the bus that were meted out to City during their visit to Anfield for a UEFA Champions League match eight years ago, there was no escaping the chants and banners inside the stadium.
The creativity of Liverpool fans was displayed on the streets lined with thousands of Reds fans before kickoff and inside Anfield once they unfurled their scathing banners in the stands.
Here’s a selection of the best banners and signs displayed inside Anfield on Sunday:
The most direct attacks since the Premier League’s independent commission’s guilty verdict was announced have focused on the finding that City “arranged ‘sham’ contracts” with a number of its commercial partners.
Man City were found guilty of 114 of the 115 charges, giving Liverpool fans the chance to create a wide, strip-like banner that carried the word “cheats” but with the British pound sign replacing the “e” 115 times. The banner was held across the stand behind City’s goal.
Liam Gallagher, lead vocalist of the British rock band Oasis, is a self-admitted lifelong Man City fan. Gallagher has been vocal in his support for City despite the charges and was among the travelling Blues supporters at Anfield. Liverpool fans picked on lyrics from some of Oasis’s biggest hits and creatively used them to mock City. The banner above takes a line from the hit song Stop Crying Your Heart Out.
A little creativity was needed for this banner, which carried a stanza from the song Where Did It All Go Wrong? A number of the titles that City won during the charged 2009-2018 period were with teams built around global football stars.
Liverpool’s supporters were among many in the Premier League who felt “cheated” during the years that City piled up domestic football trophies. They made no secret of their feelings when given the chance at Anfield against Man City.
Liverpool fans mocked the empire built by City’s former manager Pep Guardiola, who signed some of the biggest names during his decade-long run at the helm, which brought 20 trophies.
Manchester City fans had their own way of mocking Liverpool. They waved inflatable bananas at the away end, a reference to a decades-long tradition when a City fan took a blow-up banana to a game in 1987. It also served as a dig at then-Liverpool captain Steven Gerrard, who slipped during a match against Chelsea in the 2013-2014 season when the 0-2 loss to the London club set off a series of results that saw City clinch a come-from-behind Premier League title.