Liverpool set for league title

Press, 9 May 1984, Page 64

Liverpool set for league title

NZPA-Reuter London English soccer’s deadliest marksman, lan Rush, ran riot as Liverpool swept aside Coventry City, 5-0, to make virtually certain of their third successive first division League title. The Welsh international plundered four goals against a frail Coventry defence to carry Liverpool five points clear of second-placed Manchester United, who crashed to a surprise 2-1 defeat at home to the struggling Ipswich. Rush’s scoring spree also avenged Liverpool’s 4-0 thrashing at Coventry’s Highfield Road home in December, the champion’s worst defeat of the season. His first goal enabled him to break Roger Hunt’s 22-year-old club record of 42 goals for a season. United, for so long Liverpool’s sole rivals for the crown, almost certainly bowed out of the championship race after losing at home for the first time for five months. The win eased Ipswich’s relegation worries, but Notts County, who drew 0-0 at Sunderland, will join the already-doomed Wolverhampton in the second division next season. Stoke City, 1-0 winners at Luton, Birmingham, which drew, 1-1, at Norwich, and

Coventry must now fight to escape the third remaining relegation place. Newcastle finally secured their first division place after taking a point from Huddersfield. Grimsby, the only side with a mathematical chance of denying Newcastle promotion from division two, lost, 2-1, at Oldham. Newcastle fans ripped up seats and smashed windows after the 2-2 draw at Huddersfield. About 1000 of the 12,000 Newcastle fans invaded the pitch while several hundred supporters in the main stand ripped up more than 300 seats, smashed windows and turned on a fire hydrant. Police made 50 arrests and several fans were taken to hospital. Geoffrey Dickens, the conservative member of Parliament for Littleborough and Saddleworth, toured the "devastated” parts of the ground after watching the match. He said: “Drunken louts from Newcastle ripped out seats and hurled them through windows, tore up water pipes in the main stand, flooding offices below, threw bricks at a police horse, smashing its visor and generally went berserk.”