When Arsenal beat Liverpool at Anfield and never looked back

T here’s no bad way to win a league title. It’s a uniquely rewarding achievement, nine months in the making, so anytime, anyplace, anywhere will do. But as any Arsenal fan will be generous enough to explain, that doesn’t mean all coronations are equal.

In the modern era, Arsenal have won the league six times. By delirious coincidence, four of those titles were clinched away to one of their greatest rivals: twice at White Hart Lane, once at Old Trafford and once at Anfield, a game that also produced the most dramatic finish to a season in English football history. The other two, involving idyllic bank-holiday-weekend parties at Highbury, were pretty special too. But winning the league behind enemy lines is a fantasy that brings infinite glory, unimaginable euphoria and a healthy kick of schadenfreude. Most supporters don’t experience it once, never mind four times in 31 years. A handful of blessed souls were in the away end for all four games.

The story doesn’t end there. Spurs are their most hated rivals, Liverpool and Manchester United the other members of English football’s aristocracy. As well as winning the league, Arsenal have enjoyed coming-of-age victories away to all three. On each occasion, wins that felt giddily symbolic at the time were later confirmed as rites of passage for an emerging team.

David Rocastle’s orgiastic injury-time winner at White Hart Lane in the Littlewoods Cup semi-final replay of 1987 was the symbolic start of George Graham’s reign at Arsenal; Marc Overmars’ winner at Old Trafford in 1998 is a similar landmark in the Arsène Wenger years. And on 23 December 2001, 10-man Arsenal ignored xenophobia, injustice, history and Europe’s deadliest snake to outclass their title rivals Liverpool at