Liverpool sit top of the table at Christmas for the seventh time in the Premier League era – but have only seen it through to completion once before.
They join Arsenal (four times), Manchester United (twice), Newcastle (twice), Norwich, Aston Villa and Leeds United in knowing the pain of getting over-excited over the turkey only to end the season empty handed, and some of those collapses have been rather spectacular. Here’s ten of the worst from the past 32 years, including a handful of particularly notable ones from the lower leagues.
10) Manchester United – 2003/04 (Premier League)
United at least had the excuse of going up against Arsenal’s Invincibles, but the depth of United’s post-Christmas drop-off was surprising for a Sir Alex Ferguson side nonetheless.
They had lost just three times before Christmas, with a goalless draw with 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 won them from there: their post-Christmas record was W10, D5, L6, with a 4-1 defeat to away to struggling Manchester City particularly painful, especially as it left Fergie’s side with just two wins in eight games. United ended up finishing third, 15 points adrift of unbeaten Arsenal.
MORE MAN UTD COVERAGE ON F365…
👉 Man Utd lucky to have only one clown in worst Premier League XI of weekend
👉 Owen slams ‘stupid’ Man Utd star in Bournemouth loss as he urges Amorim to get ‘brutal’
👉 Man Utd swap deal given ‘OK’ with Old Trafford seen as ‘perfect destination’ for ex-Brighton star
9) Norwich City – 1992/93 (Premier League)
Titleless Norwich had also been top on Christmas Day 1988, only to end up finishing third behind Arsenal and Liverpool. Well, this time it was going to be different! Except, erm, no, it wasn’t.
The Canaries learned nothing from the warning they had provided themselves on their previous trip to the coal mine, and in fact their collapse began just before Christmas: they didn’t win any of their six games between their loss at Old Trafford on 12th December and their 1-1 draw at home to Coventry on 16th January.
Mike Walker’s side remained in indifferent mid-table form for the rest of the campaign, bizarrely alternating between impressive victories and crushing high-scoring defeats. Norwich ended up finishing 12 points behind Manchester United in third – and, very weirdly, with a negative goal difference to boot.
8) Leeds United – 1999/00 (Premier League)
Leeds were two points clear at top for the last Christmas of the 20th century (yeah, yeah, 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 makes it notable.
After shrugging off early-season defeats to Manchester United and Liverpool, David O’Leary’s Leeds had been almost unstoppable. Only Everton and Wimbledon succeeded in getting anything off them in an impressive run up to and including Boxing Day, with Michael Bridges and Harry Kewell particular stars.
But things immediately nosedived 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 put themselves dead in the water and ended up third, some 22 points off the pace.
7) Leeds United – 2018/19 (Championship)
And what a lovely way to segue to the EFL section of our list. It was Marcelo Bielsa’s Leeds this time, and again they were one point clear at the top of the second tier on Christmas Day with exactly half the season’s games played. More importantly for their automatic promotion prospects, they were six ahead of third-placed West Brom.
We’re going to resist the temptation to put their decline down to the infamous spygate incident, not least because Leeds actually lost both their last game of 2018 at home to bottom-half Hull and their New Year’s Day fixture away to Nottingham Forest. Yet despite looking far more fragile and, frankly, knackered than in the first half of the season, Leeds remained in the top two. With just four games to go Bielsa’s side were still in second place, three points clear of third-placed Sheffield United.
Their fixture list was extremely inviting, too: encounters against 21st-placed Wigan, 15th-placed Brentford, fifth-placed Aston Villa, and rock-bottom Ipswich. They got a decent point against Villa, but contrived to lose the other three. That meant Leeds finished six points away from automatic promotion; narrative dictated they must 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 collective like to forget, but nobody 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 supported by Pompey having the best record in the division in both the goals for and goals against columns.
But an abysmal run that started with a four-goal defeat at home to Hull in late January saw Portsmouth plummet to 10th by March, costing manager Kenny Jackett his job.
Hopes of a reviving the season just enough to claim a play-off spot were briefly awakened as new appointment Danny Cowley led Pompey to four wins right off the bat, but they won just two more of their remaining eight games and ended up in eighth place, two points shy of the top six.
READ NEXT: Forest 4-4 Spurs, Wolves 6-1 Man Utd: Assigning Boxing Day 1963 scores to Boxing Day 2024 fixtures
5) Huddersfield Town – 1999/00 (Championship, as it wasn’t called then)
English football’s first three-in-a-row champions had spent 27 years outside the top flight by the time they sat top of the tree for Christmas 1999, thanks in no small part to Marcus Stewart’s superb form in front of goal.
Steve Bruce’s Terriers won just one game in January and February, however, and compounded their slide to fifth place by unexpectedly selling Stewart to fourth-placed Ipswich Town on 1st February.
Stewart would, naturally, score the winner against Huddersfield less than two weeks later, then help fire the Tractor Boys to promotion via the play-offs; Huddersfield weren’t 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 were meanwhile relegated to the third tier. So that worked out well.
4) Liverpool – 1996/97 (Premier League)
Alright then, back to the Premier League from here, we reckon. And again we return to the 1990s, when a lot of the time you could win titles with a points tally in the 70s. Liverpool were well on course for that by Christmas 1996, when the Spice Girls were top of the charts with 2 Become 1 and the Spice Boys were top of the Premier League. Unfortunately for them, 1 Became 4.
It wasn’t any one extended run of especially awful form that did for them – they never went more than two games without a win – but more a general inability to string together a convincing run of victories: they only did so once in the second half the season, in fact, winning three in a row in January-February.
A series of David James blunders was particularly costly 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 left to play. Newcastle and Arsenal snuck in 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 on Manchester United’s treble-winning season and remember just how easily they could have ended up completely 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 displaced by a defeat away to Blackburn Rovers on Boxing Day, returned very briefly by beating Sheffield Wednesday, then never reclaimed top spot as they embarked on a genuinely 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 final 16 games of the season, with their only three wins in that run all coming in a vain and far-belated burst of late-season form. They were already down to sixth by that point, and three straight losses to finish the season ensured that was where they finished.
2) Liverpool – 2013/14 (Premier League)
Ah, god, do we really need to recap this one? It takes 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 notably awful in the second half of the campaign: they were the joint-second best team in the division from Boxing Day onwards, too, dropping just four points between between game 20 on New Year’s Day and game 35 in mid-April.
But come on. You can’t 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.
MORE LIVERPOOL COVERAGE ON F365…
👉 Mediawatch: Mo Salah ‘not happy’ after ‘huge update’ that’s not an update at all
👉 Ridiculous Mohamed Salah stats show why Liverpool legend is Premier League’s best ever winger
1) Newcastle United – 1995/96 (Premier League)
A brilliant failure that may never be topped. Ten points. Ten bloody points clear, Newcastle were. Ten points at Christmas. They’d been top of the table since beating Coventry 3-0 on the opening day and would stay there until close to the end of March. In the bag.
Except that having been dodgy as owt going into Christmas, a Manchester United inspired by Eric Cantona’s return from his fan-kicky suspension were virtually flawless after opening their stockings (leave it), winning all but four of their games – starting with a 2-0 victory over Newcastle themselves.
Newcastle, meanwhile, were very, very flawed, with Faustino Asprilla’s mid-season arrival bringing yet more flair to an already attacking side but leading Kevin Keegan to disastrously change shape to fit him in, while new midfield arrival David Batty failed to help matters.
That famous 4-3 defeat at Anfield in early April was Newcastle’s fourth defeat in six games, and the upturn in their form that followed was too late: Manchester United had overtaken them, and made sure the title was sealed on points rather than goal difference by winning their final two games while Newcastle were only able to draw theirs.
