Michael Reid: ‘Keep it Tight Second Half’ – The Premier League’s Biggest Capitulations

EVEN at half-time, it’s not a scoreline anyone would have thought possible.

Liverpool 7-0 Manchester United. It was 1-0 at the break – 0-0 right up until Cody Gakpo’s opener in the 43^rd minute. The game still could have gone either way when the second half started.

But what followed was a combination of a ruthless Liverpool second half display – scoring six goals from 10 shots and 2.1 xG – and a complete meltdown from Erik ten Hag’s Man Utd side.

It was only the seventh time in Premier League history that the final score margin was 6+ goals different to what it was at half-time.

These are the stories of the biggest capitulations in Premier League history.

1 – Manchester United 9-0 Ipswich Town, March 1995 (3-0 HT)

You know something crazy has happened when a run-of-the-mill Premier League game has its own Wikipedia page.

Man Utd, the reigning Premier League champions, faced Ipswich Town, who came into the game eight points adrift of safety, having lost more games at this stage than any other side in the division. A home win was to be expected. What was not so expected was that the eventual scoreline would stand alone as the Premier League’s heaviest ever defeat for any side for over 24 years.

Not until Leicester’s visit to Southampton in October 2019 would this margin of victory be repeated in the Premier League. In fact, Man Utd’s win over Ipswich was the Red Devils’ biggest top-flight victory since the Victorian era – October 1892 over Wolves, to be exact (10-1).

The difference between Man Utd’s win over Ipswich and the other 9-0 victories in the Premier League since is that six of their goals came in one half. It was ‘only’ 3-0 at half-time.

Andy Cole scored five of his side’s goals that day. Cole had scored a more modest two goals in his first six league appearances for Man Utd coming into this match, but he became the first of five players, to date, to score five times in a single Premier League game.

2 – Nottingham Forest 1-8 Manchester United, February 1999 (1-2 HT)

The only ‘capitulation’ by a home side in this list. This game started frantically – Man Utd took the lead in the 2^nd minute, Nottingham Forest equalised in the 6^th, but Alex Ferguson’s side regained their advantage just one minute later. Three goals in the opening seven minutes is a joint-record in the Premier League, but the scoreline would remain 2-1 until half-time.

Man Utd added a third and a fourth in the second half, but it wasn’t until the arrival of Ole Gunnar Solskjær as a substitute that the scoring went truly wild.

Introduced in the 72^nd minute, Solskjær not only became the Premier League’s first ever substitute hat-trick scorer, he also remains the only player in the competition’s history to score four from the bench.

The Norwegian’s four goals all came from the 80^th minute onwards. No other side in Premier League history has ever scored as many as four times from the 80^th minute in a single match – let alone a single player doing so. Truly this epitomises the term ‘capitulation’ from a Forest perspective.

That late salvo of goals meant this would be the biggest defeat for a home side in the top-flight for nearly 44 years (Cardiff 1-9 Wolves, September 1955).

In fact, it was the start of a run where Forest won just one of 12 Premier League games, finished the season rock bottom of the table and wouldn’t return to the top-flight for another 23 years. Perhaps ‘capitulation’ doesn’t quite do that justice…

3 – Manchester United 6-0 Newcastle United, January 2008 (0-0 HT)

If any Man Utd fans dared to read this article, I bet you weren’t expecting it to be this positive for your team so far. (Don’t worry fans of other sides, the Man Utd comeuppance comes later on).

Our third ‘capitulation’ sees another side concede six second half goals to Manchester United. Except this time, Newcastle did so despite going in at half-time with the score goalless.

Yes, this game is the joint-largest win by any side in a Premier League match that was level at half-time (also see Hull v Fulham below).

Cristiano Ronaldo scored what would be the only Premier League hat-trick of his first spell as a Man Utd player. His first goal came via a direct free-kick – one of 12 he scored in the competition. That opener came in the 49^th minute, Man Utd doubled their lead in the 55^th and then never looked back, completing their six-goal mauling in the 91^st minute.

But Newcastle weren’t done falling apart just yet. Former Man Utd player Alan Smith contrived to get himself sent off for Newcastle in protestation at the Red Devils’ sixth goal, adding insult to his own side’s injury.

4 – Tottenham Hotspur 9-1 Wigan Athletic, November 2009 (1-0 HT)

It’s actually quite hard to believe this game was only 1-0 at half-time. Unsurprisingly, this match saw the highest scoring half of football the Premier League has ever seen, with nine goals in the second period. Sadly for Wigan, they conceded eight of them.

Jermain Defoe helped himself to five second-half goals – of the five players to score five times in a single Premier League game, Defoe is the only one to score all of his in one half.

This result remains Tottenham’s biggest ever top-flight win, and Wigan’s joint-heaviest ever league defeat. Which brings us to our next ‘capitulation’…

5 – Chelsea 8-0 Wigan Athletic, May 2010 (2-0 HT)

The second of Wigan’s only two eight-goal league defeats – both in the same season. And, like against Spurs above, the Latics completely fell apart in the second half against Chelsea here.

It was the final day of the 2009-10 campaign. Wigan were already safe from relegation but Chelsea needed a win to confirm themselves as Premier League champions under Carlo Ancelotti.

At 2-0 at half-time, and with Wigan down to 10 men having seen Gary Caldwell dismissed in the first half, that win looked assured. But a second half Didier Drogba hat-trick helped the Blues score a further six times to take their tally for the season to 103 – the first side to reach a century of goals in a single English top-flight campaign since Spurs in 1962-63, some 47 years earlier.

This thrashing, meanwhile, took Wigan’s total of goals conceded to 79 for the season – no side has ever shipped more in the Premier League while managing to avoid relegation. A ‘capitulation’, but with no lasting consequences for them.

6 – Hull City 6-0 Fulham, December 2013 (0-0 HT)

Like Man Utd v Newcastle in 2008 (see above), this result is the joint-largest ever Premier League victory in a game that was level at half-time.

What perhaps makes this result so unexpected is that Hull had scored just 16 goals in 18 Premier League games in 2013-14 coming into this match. At 0-0 at half-time, nobody could have foreseen what was to come.

Hull’s six goals were scored by five different players, with Robert Koren the only player to net more than once for the Tigers. It is the club’s biggest ever top-flight victory, and for Fulham their second-heaviest top-flight defeat, after a 9-0 loss at Wolves in September 1959. Incredible given all the goals came in a single half.

7 – Liverpool 7-0 Manchester United, March 2023 (1-0 HT)

And so we come to Sunday.

I’m sure you’ve seen all the stats by now. Liverpool’s greatest ever victory over their old rivals. Man Utd’s joint-heaviest ever defeat in a competitive match, and heaviest for over 91 years. Mo Salah surpassing Robbie Fowler as Liverpool’s record Premier League goalscorer.

It was the joint-heaviest ever defeat suffered by a side starting the day in the Premier League’s top three, along with Nottingham Forest’s 7-0 loss at Blackburn in November 1995.

Gakpo, Darwin Núñez, and Salah all bagged braces, with Roberto Firmino adding gloss to the rout.

This was one of only four occasions in Premier League history that three different players scored twice for a side in a game, and first of the 21^st century.

Liverpool forwards were effectively helping themselves to goals in the second half. On another day, you might have called it stat padding. But this was against Manchester United, Liverpool’s greatest rivals. There’s no such thing as stat padding in this fixture. Only history making.