Aston Villa 2 – 4 Liverpool – 98 Robbie Fowler Hat Trick
Aston Villa must carry particularly good memories for Liverpool fans. I’m not even a Liverpool fan, but I can remember half a dozen stonking moments between these two clubs. Robbie Fowler had some particularly good days against them: this has to be one of his great ever goals, but then the man himself rated this his all-time No4, and this was a decent hat-trick against a previously unbeaten Villa (in November!), Gérard Houllier’s first win in sole charge. That hat-trick, though, wasn’t as good as this one, mind, when Villa had the misfortune of coming up against Ian Rush on a good day, in 1984. Here’s a stonking John Barnes header, from the days when Liverpool looked great against pretty much everyone, and a slightly fortunate 3-2 win against Villa, then European champions, in 1982 (revenge, perhaps, for this defeat the previous year).
Then of course there’s Ronnie Rosenthal (Liverpool lost 4-2 that day, with Dean Saunders, who they’d only just sold to Villa and was making his home debut, scoring two).