Liverpool equal Sir Alex Ferguson's cherished Man Utd record | OneFootball

Liverpool's Premier League triumph took the club's overall tally to 20 top-flight titles, equalling the all-time record previously held by Manchester United.

The Reds had historically dominated England's first division, establishing a domestic stranglehold in the 1970s and '80s. Liverpool won 11 league titles in an unprecedented 18-year burst which concluded in 1990.

Sir Alex Ferguson seethed through the tail-end of this supremacy in his early years at Manchester United before building the first juggernaut of the Premier League era. The Scot had taken United's total haul to 14 titles compared to Liverpool's 18 by the time the 2002/03 campaign got underway.

When former Liverpool icon Alan Hansen claimed that launching another title charge would be "the greatest challenge" of Ferguson's career, his compatriot bristled: "My greatest challenge is not what's happening at the moment, my greatest challenge is knocking Liverpool right off their f***ing perch. And you can print that."

Sir Alex Ferguson was manager for 13 of Man Utd's 20 top-flight titles / ANDREW YATES/GettyImages

Ferguson, as ever, lived up to his word. By the time he hung up his hairdryer at the end of the title-winning 2012/13 campaign, United boasted 20 titles to Liverpool's 18. Jurgen Klopp's triumph in 2020 took the Reds to 19 and Arne Slot's triumph this term has levelled the all-time standings.

There have been some dissenting voices about Liverpool's fading form in recent weeks, but winning the Premier League is nothing to sniff out for a club which endured a three-decade drought.

Steve Nicol, a stalwart of Liverpool's golden era in the 1980s, captured the creeping sense of decline at the start of the following decade. "OK, we're not in the best shape here," the former defender remembered thinking. "This is going to take a little bit longer than I thought.

"Before you knew it," he said, "it was five years, ten years, 20 years..."

Slot has ensured that the gap stands at just five years since Klopp's triumph while it is United who have now gone more than a decade since challenging for the title, let alone winning their 21st crown.