Liverpool FC History - 1892 to 1974

Liverpool FC history has been exciting, it's been colourful, it's been successful and, at times, it's been tragic. To cover Liverpool FC history fully in great detail would take many, many web pages. To adequately and succintly display Liverpool FC history on our website we have summarised it as best we can and to make it easier to read we have also broken it down into periods. To start us off we will look at Liverpool FC's history for the period 1892 to 1974.

Liverpool Football Club was founded after a dispute between Everton Football Club committee and John Houlding, who was the club president and owner of the land at Anfield. As a result of the dispute and after eight years at the stadium, Everton moved to a new ground, Goodison Park, in 1892 and, as a result, Houlding founded Liverpool Football Club, who were to remain at Anfield. Originally however, they were called "Everton F.C. and Athletic Grounds Ltd" (Everton Athletic), but the club became Liverpool F.C. in the June of 1892 after the Football Association refused to recognise the club as Everton.

Success was instant as the Liverpool won the Lancashire League in its début season, and they subsequently joined the Football League Second Division at the commencement of the 1893–94 season. After finishing top of the Second Division, Liverpool were promoted to the First Division, a Division that they won in 1901 and then again in 1906.

It is hard to imagine that it took Liverpool until 1965 to win their first FA Cup. Along the way they suffered a couple of Cup Final defeats and one really embarassing Cup exit to a non-league team in 1959. Liverpool reached their first FA Cup Final in 1914, when they lost 1–0 to Burnley F.C. Although Liverpool won consecutive League titles in 1922 and 1923, they then suffered a barren spell by their standards because they did not win another trophy until the 1946–47 season, when they lifted the First Division title for a fifth time. But still FA Cup success proved to be elusive as they suffered a second FA Cup Final defeat in 1950, when they lost to Arsenal.

Even harder to imagine though was that the club was relegated to the Second Division at the end of the 1953–54 season. It was soon after, during the 1958-59 season that Liverpool suffered a humiliating defeat, 2-1 to non league Worcester City. After this defeat a pivotal event in the Club's history followed when the legendary Bill Shankly was appointed manager. Soon after his arrival he released 24 players and converted a boot storage room at Anfield into a room where the coaches could discuss strategy - here the famous Liverpool Boot Room was born. In the famous "Boot Room", Shankly and other "Boot Room" members Joe Fagan, Reuben Bennett, and Bob Paisley talked football, tactics, Liverpool and as a result they began the reshaping of the team.

The club was promoted back into the First Division in 1962 and won the First Division title in 1964. It was the club's first title success for 17 years. In 1965 the club won its long awaited first FA Cup after they beat Leeds United, managed by Don Revie after extra-time. They followed this success with another First Division League title in 1966. Liverpool won their first "double" in the 1972-73 season when they won both the League and the UEFA Cup. The FA Cup followed a year later in 1974 when Liverpool beat Newcastle United 3-0 in one of the most one-sided Finals ever. To everyone's surprise, Shankly retired after the FA Cup Final and he was replaced by his assistant, Bob Paisley.