Arnie Baldursson (the editor) and Gudmundur Magnusson (the webmaster) set out to create a simple and an accessible website about Liverpool FC after they had been in the same roles on Liverpool‘s official Icelandic fan club site for 4 years. Their mission was to offer a different perspective on Liverpool FC to what was already on offer on the Net, a website with no forum, based on stats, historical articles and exclusive interviews. The domain, LFChistory.net, was bought in May 2002 and thus began the long process of making detailed plans and designs. Their idea was to start with the Shankly era from 1959 and then adding info from 1892-1959 as the site would develop. 16 months later LFChistory.net was launched on 8th September 2003.
On 7th October 2004 stats from 1892-1959 had been added and LFChistory.net finally had all the results from official games and friendlies, every single line-up, all goalscorers and profiles of all the players who have appeared on Liverpool's teamsheet since the 1892/1893 season.
The great pioneering work of Brian Pead has contributed a lot to the statistical documentation of Liverpool Football Club and formed the basis for all historians‘ research into the club’s facts and figures. When Arnie and Gudmundur went through their sources, they didn't treat any total number of goals or games attributed to players as untouchable. They challenged the sources behind the stats, looking at them in detail and correcting those that were clearly not correctly documented either in books or on the Net. There were no official Football League records as such for goalscorers and not uncommon that scorers would vary from source to source especially in the first decades of the club‘s existence. In those instances LFChistory.net has compared reports from local papers such as the Echo, Daily Post, Mercury and Courier and determined which was the most convincing as well as keeping in mind no newspaper is infallible.
What began as a hobby in 2002 has evolved into something much more than that proving a valuable resource to Liverpool Football Club culminating in an agreement with the club in 2009 effectively making LFChistory.net‘s stats the official stats of the club, a fact that Arnie and Gudmundur are incredibly proud of.
A select group of people deserve a good mention for helping Gudmundur the webmaster and Arnie the editor to keep LFChistory.net going.
Eric Doig is the co-author of "Essential History of Liverpool". He is the grandson of Ned Doig, Liverpool's first international goalkeeper. A lifelong Liverpool supporter and season ticket holder from the early 1960s, he is also a member of The Association of Football Statisticans. Since retiring as a medical scientist in 1990, he has devoted much of his spare time to studying the history and statistics of Liverpool Football Club. He is recognised as the official statistician for the club's Hall of Fame. Soon after our site went online Doig got in touch and proved invaluable in getting every detail right.
Chris Wood joined the LFChistory team in 2004 and has worked tirelessly ever since checking facts and rechecking facts. He is one of the thousands of faces in the crowd who has been so fortunate to watch Liverpool regularly. His earliest recollection of Liverpool Football Club is watching the 1965 FA Cup final on a black-and-white television recently acquired by his parents. He remembers running into the kitchen screaming “They’ve scored!” to tell his mother about the goals scored by Roger Hunt and Ian St. John that brought the famous trophy to Anfield for the very first time. His Christmas present the following year was being taken to watch Liverpool play Chelsea at Stamford Bridge on Christmas Eve. Chris finally made it to Anfield in 1969 and since then has been fortunate enough to watch the Reds in live action over 900 times, with over 50 of those matches being in other countries including the first 3 European cup victories and the 3 successes in the UEFA Cup … as well as numerous domestic prizes.
Chris has always had a keen interest in the statistical side of soccer and gave himself the enormous task of compiling profiles on every player who has represented Liverpool’s first-team from the start in 1892 until the late-1980’s which were put in good use at LFChistory.net.
Here you can read about Chris' letter to Bill Shankly.
Graeme Riley has provided us with the line-ups and goalscorers for all opposing teams, enabling us to give an even more complete picture of the games on this site. Graeme was a regular visitor to Anfield until he moved away from the area in the early 1990s and so is unable to attend as many matches he would like. His passion for Liverpool is matched by his interest in all football statistics, covering international and domestic competitions across Europe. This research is published on an annual basis in the series "Football In Europe".
More recently Graeme conceived of the Transfer Price Index, a method of comparing players’ and teams’ values across the whole of the Premier League era in current value terms; as a result of this he co-authored "Pay As You Play" with Paul Tomkins, in which the price of success in each season was analysed, producing some unexpected results. Graeme is a member of both the Association of Football Statisticians and its German equivalent DSFS.
Alan Hindley: Fortunately, in the 1890s Alan's grandfather's family lived closer to Anfield than Goodison otherwise he wouldn't be a Liverpool supporter. His dad started to go to the match in 1922 and Alan followed at five years old in 1956 and his son is carrying on the tradition. Unlike everybody else Alan can't remember his first game. He has been a season ticket holder in the Kemlyn Road/ Centenary Stand since 1984.
Alan retired in July 2007 after 37 years with Barclays Bank. He has belonged to the Association of Football Statisicians from its very early days. His wife actually typed out three or four of the early bulletins. He spends most of his spare time studying the history and stats of Liverpool. Alan compiled the quiz for Phil Neal's testimonial brochure and provided stats and information for two books - "Soccer In The Dock" by Simon Inglis and "Free The Manchester United One" by Graham Sharpe that deals with the great scandal in 1915 when players of Manchester United and Liverpool conspired to arrange that United would win the game against Liverpool by 2-0.
Adrian Killen has quite a comprehensive coverage of practically every LFC game from 1946 to present day. These are all in semi-professional scrapbooks up until 1970-71 season and the rest are cut down with scalpel and rule and placed in numbered files. As from 2003 Adrian was so concerned about space and weight in his attic room and study that he now stores his newspapers from 2003 onwards in the Kop store room at Liverpool FC as he works full time as a tour guide at the museum.
Also in Adrian's scrapbooks are numerous photos and match reports that he has collected from between 1892-1946. He has been collecting match reports, photos, books, programmes, videos, cine film, tickets, and general ephemora for over 45 years and has a vast collection of LFC memoribillia - almost a museum of his own.
Kjell Hansen published the excellent book "Dicky Sam‘s – Liverpool FC in blue and white“ providing a diary of the first years of the club. He has consistently provided us with rare newspaper articles about Liverpool that have been worth their weight in gold and he has always responded positively to our numerous requests of checking newspapers at the library. Without him this level of accuracy would be impossible and we wouldn't have as much insight into Liverpool's early history.
Chetan Murarji's incredible Players' Directory listing 2185 players who have been on Liverpool's books has helped LFChistory.net with details for players who played in wartime matches. He has been working on the directory since 2005 and the information has been gleaned from numerous sources - LFChistory.net included. His vision is to have the most complete listing of players who have been with our great club since 1892, regardless of whether they made an appearance or not. 70% of the players in the directory never appeared in the Liverpool FC first team but according to Murarji they should still be considered to be 'a part of the family' even triallists. The 2011 directory can be previewed and bought at myebook.com.
Alex Twells has compiled over the years a record of all Liverpool matches since 1892. Alex says that in the interests of making LFChistory.net THE COMPLETE RECORD he started sending some queries to our website. Alex lived the first 45 years of his life in Liverpool, and supported Liverpool regularly. He got involved in Liverpool soccer statistics at about the age of 8! He spent many, many hours in the Liverpool Newspaper libraries, and the greatest amount of his records came as a result of that. He remembers turning page after page looking for any match that might have been played, especially friendlies and Lancashire and Liverpool Senior Cups.
The website was relaunched in December 2010 with several new features. Many thanks to Marianna Ivanova for creating a sensational new header.
The LFChistory.net team
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