Amps We need a definitive answer, are Utd better, worse, or the same as Liverpool were in the mid to late 90s and most of the 2000s?
Trying to speak objectively, I’d be way more pissed off as a United fan.
Liverpool had the Moores family in charge (benevolent, loved the club, just a bit misguided), they weren’t total parasites running the club on a leveraged buy-out like the Glazers.
Even when we were shite (Roy Evans era), we still played really good football. Or we played really hideous-to-watch football (Houllier) but still won a lot of stuff and went far in the Champions League.
I would also be way more pissed off about the 7-0 and similar hidings than any Liverpool loss to United. I don’t remember an embarrassing one. There was the one when we were 0-3 down at Anfield but came back to draw 3-3. I think there was one where Forlan scored a couple and we still only lost 4-2 or something. And we often spawned 1-0 wins at Old Trafford (Danny Murphy twice IIRC, maybe Riise for another one?). And there was one where we were 1-0 up in the FA Cup but they did us with two late goals, just as they did Bayern in that year’s European Cup Final. Massively annoying but not shameful.
We did have some low points, particularly under Souness, though. A 5-1 pasting at Coventry and going out of the FA Cup to Bristol City were pretty memorable for the wrong reasons, and losing in Finland to Kuusysi Lahti although we won 6-2 on aggregate. Souness still won the FA Cup though (as, of course, ten Hag has). But even then things didn’t seem hopeless, we were usually about 6th in the league and had good kids coming in like McManaman, Redknapp and Fowler, who gave more for the shirt than Rashford seems to.
The only genuinely hopeless period I remember in my lifetime was the Gillette/Hicks period, and Hodgson, which all thankfully only lasted about 2-3 years. That was when we were making genuinely awful signings and paying them way too much (Cole, Konchesky, Poulsen etc).
Personally, I loved the Benitez era, until the dark days at the end when he was at war with the board.
