Liverpool next? Ten Christmas Day waiters who missed the season finale

Liverpool sit top of the table at Christmas for the seventh time in the Premier League era – but have only seen it through to the finish line once before.

They join Arsenal (four times), Manchester United (twice), Newcastle (twice), Norwich, Aston Villa and Leeds United in knowing the pain of getting overexcited about Turkey only to finish the season empty-handed, and some of those collapses have been quite spectacular. Here are ten of the worst from the past 32 years, including a handful of particularly notable ones from the minor leagues.

10) Manchester United – 2003/04 (Premier League)
At least United had the excuse of going up against Arsenal’s Invincibles, but the depth of United’s post-Christmas drop-off was nonetheless surprising for a Sir Alex Ferguson side.

They had lost just three times before Christmas, with a goalless draw against Arsenal at Old Trafford the only time they had shared the spoils, putting them a point ahead of Arsenal and Chelsea on Christmas Day.

But United dropped points more often than they gained them from there: their post-Christmas record was W10, D5, L6, with a 4-1 defeat away from home which left Manchester City particularly sore, especially as it left Fergie’s side with just two wins in eight games. United ended up third, 15 points behind unbeaten Arsenal.

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9) Norwich City – 1992/93 (Premier League)
Title-less Norwich had also been top on Christmas Day 1988, but ended up third behind Arsenal and Liverpool. Well, this time it was going to be different! Except, um, no, it wasn’t.

The Canary Islands learned nothing from the warning they had given themselves on their previous trip to the coal mine, and in fact their collapse just began before Christmas: they didn’t win any of their six games between their loss at Old Trafford on 12 December and their 1-1 draw at home to Coventry on 16 January.

Mike Walker’s side remained in indifferent mid-table form for the rest of the campaign, bizarrely alternating between impressive wins and crushing high-scoring defeats. Norwich ended up finishing 12 points behind Manchester United in third place – and oddly enough with a negative goal difference.

8) Leeds United – 1999/00 (Premier League)
Leeds were two points clear at the top going into the last Christmas of the 20th century (yes, yes, shut up, the ‘millennium was actually 2001’ pedants, nobody likes you), partly because they had a game in hand over Manchester United, but again, it’s the sheer depths they sank to from there that make it remarkable.

After shrugging off early season defeats to Manchester United and Liverpool, David O’Leary’s Leeds had been almost unstoppable. Only Everton and Wimbledon managed to get something out of them in an impressive run up to and including Boxing Day, with Michael Bridges and Harry Kewell particular stars.

But things immediately fell apart after that: Leeds lost four of their next six, including six-pointers against fellow title hopefuls Man United, Arsenal and Liverpool. Three straight wins in March briefly revived Leeds’ hopes of pushing Ferguson’s men all the way – they had just four points to make up in their last nine games – but they promptly lost four in a row to leave themselves dead in the water and ended up third, about 22 points off the pace.

7) Leeds United – 2018/19 (Championship)
And what a lovely way to follow the EFL section of our list. It was Marcelo Bielsa’s Leeds this time and again they were a point clear at the top of the second tier on Christmas Day with exactly half of the season’s games played. More importantly for their automatic promotion prospects, they were six ahead of third-placed West Brom.

We’ll resist the temptation to blame their decline on the infamous spygate incident, not least because Leeds actually lost both their final game of 2018 at home to bottom-half Hull and their New Year’s game away to Nottingham Forest. Yet despite looking far more fragile and, frankly, crunchier than in the first half of the season, Leeds remained in the top two. With just four games remaining, Bielsa’s side were still in second place, three points clear of third-placed Sheffield United.

Their fixture list was also extremely inviting: meetings against 21st-placed Wigan, 15th-placed Brentford, fifth-placed Aston Villa, and rock-bottom Ipswich. They got a decent point against Villa but managed to drop the other three. This meant that Leeds finished six points clear of automatic promotion; the narrative dictated that they would then lose to Derby in the play-off semi-finals.

6) Portsmouth – 2020/21 (League One)
That season behind closed doors is one we’d all like to forget, but none more so than Portsmouth. They led an extremely tight third-tier table on Christmas Day on goal difference and having played a game more than second-placed Lincoln City, but their credentials were bolstered by Pompey, who had the best record in the division in both goals for and goals against columns.

But an abysmal run that started with a four-goal defeat at home to Hull at the end of January saw Portsmouth drop to 10th in March, costing manager Kenny Jackett his job.

Hopes of a revival of the season just enough to claim a play-off spot were briefly raised when new signing Danny Cowley led Pompey to four straight wins, but they won just two more of their remaining eight games to finish eighth. two points left of the top six.

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5) Huddersfield Town – 1999/00 (Championship, as it was not called then)
English football’s first three-in-a-row champions had spent 27 years outside the top flight when they sat top of the tree at Christmas 1999, thanks in no small part to Marcus Stewart’s superb form in front of goal.

However, Steve Bruce’s Terriers won just one game in January and February and compounded their slide to fifth by unexpectedly selling Stewart to fourth-placed Ipswich Town on 1 February.

Stewart would of course score the winner against Huddersfield less than two weeks later and then help fire the Tractor Boys to promotion via the play-offs; Huddersfield were not even involved, having finished the season in eighth place. Stewart scored 19 Premier League goals the following season as Ipswich finished a brilliant fifth; Huddersfield, meanwhile, were relegated to the third tier. So it worked out well.

4) Liverpool – 1996/97 (Premier League)
Okay then, back to the Premier League from here, we reckon. And again we return to the 1990s, when you could often win titles with a score in the 70s. Liverpool were well on their way to it at Christmas 1996, with the Spice Girls topping the charts with 2 Become 1 and the Spice Boys topping the Premier League. Unfortunately for them, it was 1 to 4.

It wasn’t a single extended run of particularly awful form that did it for them – they never went more than two games without a win – but more a general inability to string together a convincing run of wins: they did so only once in the other. half of the season, actually winning three in a row in January-February.

It was a series of mistakes by David James particularly expensive for Roy Evans’ side, whose title hopes were effectively killed off by a 3-1 defeat at home to eventual champions Manchester United with just three games to play. Newcastle and Arsenal crept ahead of the Reds on goal difference on the final day to boot, leaving Liverpool to finish fourth in a two-horse race.

3) Aston Villa – 1998/99 (Premier League)
It’s always remarkable to look back at Manchester United’s treble-winning season and remember how easily they could have ended up empty-handed. Case in point: it was John Gregory’s Aston Villa, not United, who sat top of the table on Christmas Day that season.

It didn’t last long: Villa were ousted by a defeat away to Blackburn Rovers on Boxing Day, bounced back very briefly by beating Sheffield Wednesday, then never won top spot as they embarked on a truly miserable second half of the season as Dion Dublin and Julian Joachim’s brilliant goalscoring form dried up.

Villa took just 12 points from their last 16 games of the season and their only three wins in that run all came in a futile and long overdue burst of late-season form. By then they were already down to sixth place, and three straight losses to end the season ensured that was where they finished.

2) Liverpool – 2013/14 (Premier League)
Oh, God, do we really need to recap this one? It demands such a high position, not because Brendan Rodgers’ Liverpool were miles ahead at Christmas, because they weren’t: they were only top on goal difference and just two points ahead of fifth-placed Everton.

Nor is it because Liverpool were particularly awful in the second half of the campaign: they were also the second-best team in the division from Boxing Day onwards, dropping just four points between Game 20 on New Year’s Day and Game 35 in mid-April .

But come on. You cannot make any list of title capitulations without including Liverpool 2013/14. This does not slip (which he did). Another Istanbul (which they were on the receiving end of from Crystal Palace). Comedy gold.

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1) Newcastle United – 1995/96 (Premier League)
A brilliant failure that may never be topped. Ten points. Ten bloody points clear were Newcastle. Ten points for Christmas. They had been top of the table since beating Coventry 3-0 on the opening day and would remain there until close to the end of March. In the bag.

Except that after being shaky going into Christmas, a Manchester United inspired by Eric Cantona’s return from his fan-kicky suspension were virtually flawless after opening their socks off (don’t be), winning all but four of their games – starting with a 2-0 win over Newcastle themselves.

Newcastle, meanwhile, were very, very flawed, with Faustino Asprilla’s mid-season arrival bringing even more flair to an already attacking side but leading to Kevin Keegan disastrously changing shape to fit him in, while new midfield arrival David Batty didn’t help matters.

The famous 4-3 defeat at Anfield in early April was Newcastle’s fourth defeat in six games and the upswing in their form that followed was too late: Manchester United had overtaken them and ensured the title was sealed on points on goal difference by winning their last two games while Newcastle were only able to play theirs.