William E. Gladstone claimed that selfishness was the greatest curse of the human race. He said this back in 1890, long before fans of Tottenham Hotspur began cowering behind their sofas in fear of how Liverpool would find a new way stamp on their soul, so we’ll let him off the hook for getting that one wrong.
For the last decade or so, the Reds have had Spurs in a chokehold despite competing at around the same level. There is Scouse hump that Tottenham simply cannot get over.
This Saturday, Tottenham will attempt to beat Liverpool at a home that isn’t Wembley for the first time since November 2012. Supporters will be hoping just to get through it without another notable hands-on-head, Neil Warnock staring-at-the-referee kind of moment.
Tottenham’s last victory against Liverpool in N17 came on November 28 2012 at the old White Hart Lane.
Aaron Lennon and Gareth Bale scored in the opening quarter of an hour to put Spurs in control, though the two combined in a rather different way to hand Liverpool a lifeline.
When trying to clear a corner, Lennon managed to hoof the ball directly into Bale’s face. It trickled over the line and the Reds were handed a consolation, but this where the tale of Tottenham’s misfortune began.
In the summer of 2013, Tottenham shifted Bale for a world-record £85m fee and brought in seven players. The saying – an incredibly smart saying, a proverbial masterpiece – was that Spurs had sold Elvis Presley but bought The Beatles.
Liverpool – the city and the club – seemed to take offence to this and destroyed Tottenham at the first possible opportunity.
Inspired by Luis Suarez (and finished off by Jon Flanagan), Brendan Rodgers’ side won 5-0 at White Hart Lane. Andre Villas-Boas was sacked as head coach the next day.
Tottenham were in complete disarray by the time they next faced Liverpool back at Anfield.
Tim Sherwood had been appointed as caretaker boss until the end of the season but he was finding new ways to tank his approval rating among fans by the week.
When Spurs were thrashed 4-0 on Merseyside, he opted to watch the game from the stands. He wasn’t suspended, he wasn’t serving any kind of ban, he just chose not to be on the touchline. Presumably he could figure out why his coaching wasn’t working at higher ground.
Disgruntled away fans chanted, “Where is our manager?” for much of that long, long afternoon at Anfield.
During his ill-fated single season at Liverpool, Mario Balotelli only scored once in the Premier League.
It came at in the 83rd minute of a 3-2 win at home to Tottenham during which Spurs were most certainly not the lesser of the two teams. Sometimes it do be like that. Always it do be like that.
Liverpool’s slow start to the 2015/16 season saw Rodgers lose his job.
I know you’re thinking about Thierry Henry putting his hand on Jamie Carragher’s thigh.
Jurgen Klopp was swiftly appointed as his successor, and his first match was a trip to Tottenham.
A Reds team of misfits and differing styles played like they’d set the EAFC sliders up to 99 on everything. Spurs held the gegenpressing gang to a 0-0 draw.
It is incredibly Tottenham that their one truly outstanding triumph against Liverpool in the modern era would somehow come back to bite them later down the line.
Mauricio Pochettino’s men swept aside the Reds with ease at Wembley in October 2017, prevailing 4-1 in part thanks to some help from their visitors’ awful defending.
This was the height of Liverpool’s ‘wow imagine how good they could be if they actually cared one single iota about their defence’.
Two months later, they signed Virgil van Dijk for £75m, stopped playing so aggressively high and, perhaps more importantly, stopped playing Dejan Lovren. This loss has long been attributed as the straw that broke the camel’s back.
I am not a spiritual man. I do not believe in fate or destiny or a creator’s plan. I laugh in the face of horoscopes. I reject notions of predetermination. I try and fit Marmite into my diet every day in the hope I will live to 120 and say that was my secret to it. I do not even necessarily believe in karma because it does not believe in me.
Others do, however, and I’m trying to be inclusive as possible, so I’ll throw those people a bone.
It’s not even as if Tottenham’s 2-2 draw at Liverpool in February 2018 was undeserved, but it got the Reds raging and if anything got them to brush up on their witchcraft to renew the curse.
Harry Kane exaggerated contact late on at 1-1 to win a penalty. Loris Karius saved it. Mohamed Salah thought he’d won it in stoppage time until Van Dijk fired a boot up Erik Lamela’s backside. Kane this time netted from 12 yards with the final kick of the game, proclaiming “You can’t give me two tries,” down the camera.
Tottenham slated that they were going to open their new billion-pound stadium when they were scheduled to face Liverpool on September 15 2018.
It would not open until April 3 2019. Klopp’s charges won 2-1 at Wembley with little fuss.
Few gave Tottenham hope of leaving title-chasing Liverpool with a point when they made the trip to Anfield in March 2019. They nearly snuck away with all three and ended up heading home with zero.
With the game finely poised at 1-1, Moussa Sissoko broke through on goal with a great chance to win it for Spurs. The retreating Van Dijk managed to put him off enough to sky a shot nearly over the Anfield Road stand.
And so Liverpool went back down the other end and won it courtesy of Hugo Lloris essentially chucking the ball into Toby Alderweireld, a neat parallel to the Lennon-Bale gaffe.
— Football on TNT Sports (@footballontnt) June 1, 2019
It’s not handball. It just isn’t. It’s not on a normal day, it’s not in the 22nd second of a Champions League final. It hits his chest, for goodness sake.
At the time of writing, Pochettino is on a run of 14 Premier League away games without a win. He could have secured a famous one at the back-end of his Tottenham tenure if not for wastefulness in front of goal.
In their October 2019 meeting at Anfield, Spurs took the lead through Kane after 47 seconds.
The striker decided against throwing his body at a cross from Christian Eriksen with the goal gaping in the first half, while Son Heung-min rounded Alisson but hit the crossbar with a rushed finish in the second.
Liverpool promptly scored twice to seal a comeback win on their way to Premier League glory.
By January 2020, Liverpool and Tottenham were heading in completely different directions.
And yet Spurs nearly held the would-be champions at a time where they were struggling with Kane out injured. Son first spurned an opportunity to level the scores when 1-0 down, before Giovani Lo Celso slid in to meet a deep Serge Aurier cross but somehow send the ball essentially the whole way back.
New Tottenham boss Jose Mourinho swivelled and sunk to his knees in disbelief. For once, his overreaction was perhaps justified.
This sub-heading is in quote marks because it is completely nonsensical and a fantasy of Mourinho’s ‘Mourinhista’ fanbase.
Steven Bergwijn did strike the post when bearing down on goal with Alisson, sure. It was just wretched another moment on the way to defeat rather than a title-altering sliding-doors moment, though.
Antonio Conte’s Tottenham weren’t always boring. In fact, during his first season at the club, they were a ruthless and efficient winning machine.
The Italian’s era was kickstarted by a thrilling 2-2 draw at home to Liverpool which Spurs really should have nicked.
Both sides were coming into the game off the back of Covid-19 outbreaks but they admirably left everything out there to throw up one of the best matches all season.
Alisson made sweeping – and straight up humanly unfair – saves to deny Kane and Dele, though he at least gave them a goal back when he failed to clear a straight forward ball in behind to Son.
— Sky Sports Premier League (@SkySportsPL) November 6, 2022
This isn’t really much to the curse, but Eric Dier could probably just not have headed the ball that weakly back towards Lloris.
Having lost 6-1 at Newcastle United and gone five down early on in the process a week earlier, you feared for Tottenham when they quickly conceded three away at Liverpool.
But the Reds endeavoured to let Spurs back into the contest. Ivan Perisic broke Van Dijk’s ankles, Kane pulled one back, Son added another and we had a grandstand finish on our hands.
Interim boss Ryan Mason threw on Richarlison – at this point the scorer of precisely zero Premier League goals for Tottenham – in hope the former Everton man would come back to haunt Liverpool. It so, so nearly worked.
Richarlison got a glancing head on an in-swinging free-kick from Son to level it in stoppage time. He threw his shirt off and darted towards a jubilant away end that had little to celebrate all season.
And then the curse peaked. Lucas Moura, playing his first minutes since being recklessly sent off in an eventual 1-1 draw at relegation-battling Everton, turned back towards his own goal and thought there was a clear route to play the ball to Fraser Forster.
He did not see Diogo Jota – who was very, very fortunate not to have been sent off for a high challenge moments earlier on Oliver Skipp that required several stitches in his head to heal – ready to pounce.
The Portuguese forward reached the ball first and poked home to swiftly ruin Spurs’ day.
With Ange Postecoglou at the helm, Tottenham feels like a club united for the first time in nearly half a decade.
If they can emerge unscathed from their upcoming battle with Liverpool, they may well and truly have turned a corner.
If not, it’s time for me to start paying some critical attention to starsigns and the zodiac. See you on the other side, my fellow Cancerians.
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