What If ...

What if... QPR were able to stop Liverpool’s European Cup domination before it started?
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QPR almost stopped Liverpool's European party from happening

By Damian Mannion - @damian_mannion

Thursday, May 3, 2018

talkSPORT looks at key moments in football history, where events could so easily have taken a different course and asks, what if? This week we ponder what if Liverpool's European domination had been derailed before it even had a chance to begin? Because the Reds' first European Cup success began with a nerve-wracking title race...

What happened?

Having beaten Leeds 2-0 in their final game of the 1975/76 season, QPR were looking down on every other club in the English top flight.


A point separated Dave Sexton’s men from Liverpool (in the days of two points for a win), but there was to be an anxious 10-day wait at the top of the pyramid before Rangers found out if they would be crowned champions.

That’s because the Reds’ final game against Wolves had been pushed back due to Bob Paisley’s men having a UEFA Cup final to contest, and back then there was no television agenda to ensure all clubs kicked off their final league matches at the same time.

QPR, with the likes of Frank McLintock, Stan Bowles and Gerry Francis (pictured below), had not lost at their Loftus Road home all season. They began the campaign with a 2-0 win against Liverpool, their football dazzled neutrals, yet the West London club still found themselves in this torturous position.

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In their final 15 games of the season, the R's won 13, drew one and lost one. And those two matches proved crucial.

The draw was against bottom of the league Sheffield United, while Norwich beat them 3-2 at Carrow Road on 17 April.

Fans point to the Norwich result as the game that cost them the title, while Bowles, in his autobiography says they should have beaten the Blades.

“I am quite sure that drawing the Sheffield United game, where a win would have taken us clear of Liverpool at the top of the league, cost us dear,” he said.

Bowles says being held by the worst team in the division was damaging and added a win would have meant less pressure ahead of the Norwich game and quite possibly a different result.

“I’m sure we’d have got a draw at least [at Carrow Road], which would have been enough [to win the league],” Bowles wrote.

For the title decider, some of QPR's players huddled together around a telly at the BBC studio in West London to watch Liverpool take on relegation-threatened Wolves. All the R's good work now hinged on 90 minutes of football in which they would play no part.

Sheffield United happened to be playing fellow relegation battlers Birmingham on the same evening, but if Wolves could win at Molineux and the Blues lost, then they would stay up.

Wolves duly took the lead after 13 minutes and, with 15 minutes left to play, QPR were champions-elect.

However, a 1-1 draw at Bramall Lane meant Wolves were down, and Liverpool scored three times in the closing stages, including two in the last five minutes, to win 3-1 and seal their ninth title.

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Despite the huge anti-climax for Rangers, it was still a thrilling ride. They’d been in Division Three 10 years earlier and fans, gutted at falling at the last hurdle, were for the most part pleased to have been dazzled by the skill of Bowles, Francis and Thomas.

For Liverpool it was the beginning of a period of dominance in England Europe, beginning with their first European Cup in 1977 and a successful defence in 1978, followed by a third and fourth continental success in 1981 and 1984.

Between 1976 and 1990, Liverpool also claimed 10 league titles, four League Cups and two FA Cups.

But WHAT IF QPR had won it?

Obviously the European dream would not have begun for Liverpool and there’s every chance they could have missed out on the 1977 First Division title, too, if Kevin Keegan had decided to leave earlier.

In the 1976/77 campaign, the forward top scored with 12 league goals (20 overall) to help the Reds edge Man City to the crown, winning once again by a point.

Keegan was always going to leave Liverpool, but would he have brought his transfer forward by a year if the club had missed out on European football?

He has admitted that by the time he moved to Hamburg in 1977 he was ready to seek out a new challenge and maybe QPR winning the league would have made up his mind.

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His replacement was the man who eventually ruled the Kop, Kenny Dalglish, but would Celtic have let their star striker leave in 1976, had Keegan departed a year early?

According to reports at the time of his 1977 transfer, the Scottish club repeatedly said no to Liverpool’s advances before eventually listening to their proposal.

A year earlier Celtic were trying to wrestle the league crown back from bitter rivals Rangers, who had just won successive titles. They eventually did in Dalglish's final year at the club.

When Liverpool came calling the Reds were European champions and that, plus the money on offer, was understandably hard to refuse for both player and club.

If they weren’t playing in the European Cup, then maybe Dalglish would have gone elsewhere, such as Germany, as was rumoured at the time? Or worse, Manchester United, who offered the Hoops more money than Liverpool in 1977, to no avail since Dalglish had his heart set on joining the English and European champions.

Dalglish finished as top scorer in his first two seasons at Liverpool, scoring the winner in the 1978 European Cup final and winning the league in his second.

He went on to win trophy-after-trophy as a player and manager at Anfield, but had QPR claimed the title in 1976 things would have been so different.

It's all subjective because nobody can really know what might have been, but what we do know is that Sheffield United and Norwich both helped pave the way for Liverpool to become five-time kings of Europe.


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