Liverpool 20 Man Utd 20: Slot & Salah help Reds draw level in battle for all-time greats

A 20th top-flight title means LFC are now back level with MUFC as the best club in English history. But dozens of clubs globally have 30, 40, 50 or more league crowns...

Liverpool’s 5-1 demolition of Tottenham yesterday was most significant because it means they have claimed a second Premier League title and a 20th English top-flight title in their history, drawing them level with Manchester United in that regard.

Manager Arne Slot is being celebrated as a hero on Merseyside after his first season in charge at Anfield.

The win over Spurs also means Liverpool have extended their lead over United in the all-time tally of major trophies. That pair, still the most popular two English clubs globally, whichever metrics you use, remain head and shoulders above all the other English clubs in terms of total major trophies.

Arsenal are third in that list, with Manchester City fourth, albeit under a cloud due to two UEFA sanctions for cheating and / or non-compliance with financial regulations, and with the result of their “115 case”, or “130 case”, still pending. (See here and here for more on that).

For a decade or more, I’ve been keeping a tally of major trophies won by English clubs, usually on the day that each new trophy is confirmed in either the Premier League, FA Cup, League Cup or one of Europe’s club competitions.

Liverpool prevailed at a romp yesterday, with Mo Salah (below, involved in a selfie mid-game after his goal) hugely important, yet again.

This is how my table looked at the end of yesterday’s match, with my methodology and justification for that methodology below:

There will always be critics of any table of this kind - it’s a game of opinions, after all, and more than that, a game of biases and agendas by fans of every club. (I say this as a Southampton fan, and you won’t find many Saints fans more biased against their own useless club with flawed owners than me).

Anyway, one criticism of my counting method is that the only “major” trophies I consider are top-flight titles in England, the FA Cup, the League Cup, and “season long” European trophies (the European Cup aka the Champions League since 1992-93), the Europa League (formerly the UEFA Cup), plus the now-defunct Cup-Winners’ Cup and Fairs Cup.

I don’t include any “one-off” cups such as the Charity Shield (aka the Community Shield now) or the Super Cup, which have always felt ceremonial to me, and have long been treated (by many managers and fans) as glorified friendlies; and nor do I include any tournaments or iterations of those tournaments (hello Intercontinental Cup, now morphed into the Club World Cup), that were ever one-offs, for the same reason.

You are absolutely entitled to disagree.

Another criticism of my system is that it doesn’t include clubs such as West Ham, who have won several European trophies of various significance. But my minimum requirement for the table is that any club must have won at least one English top-flight league title to be included. And West Ham have never done that, even though they did win the 1966 World Cup. (This is a joke for English people, at West Ham’s expense unless you’re a West Ham fan and believe it).

The league title is the bread and butter baseline of consistent dominance over your peers in any given football season in any given country. (Unless you’re awarding your top league title after play-offs, in which case you’re doing football wrong).

Anyway, only 24 clubs have won the English top-flight title since it was first contested in 1888-89 and won by Preston, and thus they are the 24 clubs in my table.

Again, feel free to disagree. Make your own table and tweet it to me (or Blue Sky it to me) with a pithy reason why it should be considered as the best measure, and if I like it, I’ll share it. Or share your thoughts in the comments.

The third criticism I get most often is that I absolutely shouldn’t count each of the “major trophies” as equal because the league title or indeed the Champions League are worth so much more than, say, the Carabao Cup.

I take this point as valid, obviously, but in my defence I’ve tried a number of times to “weight” the trophies to see what difference that makes and for the vast majority of clubs, it makes no difference to where they stand in the rankings, however I rate the trophies, within reason.

Liverpool and United remain No1 and No2 with Arsenal in No3, and Manchester City, however dubiously, in No4.

These are on the basis that a Premier League title is worth 10 points, as is a European Cup / CL win, while a smaller European trophy is worth 6.5 points and an FA Cup 5.5 points and a League Cup 4.5 points. You can tinker forever with this stuff and you’ll never find agreement.

Using the points basis above the only significant changes to my current order would see A: Everton move ahead of Tottenham due to so many more league titles; and B: Sunderland move ahead of Forest for the same reason.

And yet. All of Sunderland’s league titles are now available only in sepia and they haven’t won the European Cup twice. So it’s swings and roundabouts. Feel free to vehemently (or indeed agreeably) disagree.

Which clubs have the most top-flight titles in the world?

I know it’s the question on everyone’s lips, not least because Celtic confirmed a 55th Scottish top-division title over the weekend, drawing them level with Rangers’ 55 titles.

The two Scottish giants are now joint-second in the table of clubs in world football with the most domestic league top-flight titles.

But one club in the world has even more domestic top-flight titles, and that is Linfield, currently of the NIFL Premiership.

Here are the clubs with the most top-flight titles in the world: