The last time Liverpool won the league in 1990 (by league I mean top tier of English football) the South East enjoyed a mostly dry, warm and sunny summer. A particularly hot spell in August of that year saw the UK high temperature record broken when the mercury reached 37.1C at Cheltenham on August 3rd, a record that stood until 2003.

Since the middle of December last year the weather has been remarkably similar to that football season when the Reds won their 18th league title. Both winters were remarkably mild and stormy with January 1990 seeing the Burns’ Day storm.

The mean temperature this year over the same period, December 13th to April 26th, is just 0.2C cooler than 1989-90, while rainfall is 2.1% greater and sunshine is 2.5% less. A remarkable singularity.

Will history repeat itself come the end of the season and the end of the summer? Up until early Sunday afternoon the stage seemed set. But a slip by Liverpool skipper Steven Gerrard at the end of the first half gifted Demba Ba with a chance that opened the way for Chelsea to complete the double over their title rivals.

It must have been agonising for the Kop to watch, 24 years on from the exact same weekend the Reds lifted the title with two games left. The weather that followed that memorable day was dry, sunny and warm with temperatures reaching the mid 20s on many days.

Fast forward two dozen years and the weather looks decidedly unsettled, with frequent showers or longer spells of rain interspersed with sunshine. Though there’s doubtless many twists and turns left I wonder if Reds fans believe their title hopes are going the same way as the change in the weather?

Football’s a funny old game – just like the weather.