Liverpool vs Sunderland Timeline & H2H Stats

As a football club, Sunderland AFC was formed in 1879, which was nearly two decades before Liverpool Football Club came into being. That might well help to explain why it was that the Merseysiders struggled against them during the more formative years of the club’s time in the Football League, losing nine of the first 11 games that they played against one another. That might seem entirely foreign to a modern supporter, used to Liverpool dominating football on the global stage and often competing for the Premier League title. When they first began life in the First Division, however, they struggled.

Although it would be untrue to say that the Black Cats have long been a thorn in Liverpool’s side, it is certainly the case that Sunderland have enjoyed long periods of success against their Merseyside rivals. Towards the end of the 1920s, for example, the clubs met one another six times and Sunderland won every single encounter. Once the Reds started to really enjoy their time in the top-flight, however, the tables turned in quite a firm fashion. Between the April of 1961 and the same month 22 years later, for example, Liverpool won 17 times, drawing on seven occasions and losing just once.

Liverpool Dominant in Recent Times

That success that Liverpool enjoyed once the club became the global powerhouse that we know and recognise today never really showed any sign of relenting. Throughout the modern history of the two clubs, it is significantly more unusual to see a Sunderland win marked up on the scoreboard than it would have been 50 years or so before. Speaking of strange, even when the Black Cats did manage to notch up a win against their Merseyside rivals, it sometimes happened in the most bizarre of circumstances. The best example of that came on the 17th of October 2009.

The game between Rafael Benítez’s Liverpool and Sunderland took place at the Stadium of Light when Darren Bent, lining up for the Black Cats, took a tame shot that was heading straight towards Pepe Reina in the Reds’ goal. It should have been an easy save for the Spaniard, but instead it struck a beach ball that diverted it into the net. The referee should’ve disallowed the goal but failed to do so, resulting in a 1-0 win for the home team. Given the paucity of wins for Sunderland in the modern era, it is perhaps not all that surprising that that victory stands out to everyone.

Liverpool’s Full Match History Against Sunderland