Chelsea Now Like Liverpool Of '89, Says Ferguson

Sir Alex Ferguson has previously suggested, somewhat disparagingly, that the current Chelsea side are too old to improve, and now in reiterating that view he has added that they remind him of Liverpool just before the Reds went into decline after dominating English football in the 1970s and 1980s.

Ferguson said: "I don't see any change in Chelsea. That is, to me they don't look as if they are going to find acres of improvement, simply because they are a very experienced team.

“But that experienced team can easily win the league because it's not exactly disintegrating. They are at their very peak, I would think, as a team.

“So it's much like the Liverpool team of 1989. Exactly that same format of experience of that Liverpool team."

The Sunday Telegraph reported that when Ferguson was reminded that Liverpool have never fully recovered from that point, he replied: "I know. It was a very experienced team but that's the difficulty of football clubs.”

Ferguson’s observation might have been more apt if he’d compared Chelsea with the Liverpool side of 1990.
Although in the 1988-89 season - exactly 20 years ago - the Reds were pipped to the title by Arsenal at Anfield in that never-to-be-forgotten last-day epic when Michael Thomas snatched the championship from their grasp in injury-time with the Gunners’ decisive second goal, Liverpool bounced back to claim their 18^th (and last) title the following season - 1989-90.