Tranmere’s relationship with local neighbours Liverpool goes back a long way.
It began with Reds supporters going to watch Rovers on Friday nights before heading to Anfield the following day, and this is a relationship that has been revived in recent years in the form of pre-season friendlies.
For the fourth year in succession, the two sides will meet at Prenton Park, and Tranmere chairman Mark Palios believes tomorrow's encounter presents a chance to ‘celebrate what was a good season for both clubs’.
The growing connection between the teams is clear to see, and unless you’re from Merseyside, it’s a bond you won’t appreciate, believes Palios.
“I think it’s one of the things that has always been there, to some extent, the relationship between Tranmere and the other clubs on Merseyside”, he said.
“Certainly when I played, there were fans who used to come across from Liverpool on a Friday night and watch Tranmere, Liverpool and Everton .
“People from outside of Merseyside don’t quite understand, there are certain fans that will be very anti-Reds, Blues and Whites but, at the end of the day, there’s always that support for a Merseyside club and, I personally, have always supported all of the Merseyside clubs, especially when I was away from the area—you become a real Merseysider.
“I think everyone has a certain pride in success, and lots of the good wishes that came after the final (play-off) came from Reds and Blues, which was great.
“Since we’ve been back (in the Football League), Liverpool, in particular, have been very supportive of us as a club, and you always remember the people who were with you when you’re down.
Palios continued: “We have a close association with them: their under-23s play here at Prenton Park, the Women’s team play here and also train at our Campus, so relationships are pretty strong.
“We were pleased that Liverpool achieved their sixth Champions League trophy, and coming to play us as the European champions is no small thing, whatsoever. I think that’s an added bonus this year and, of course, we’ve got our own trophy as well.”
Tranmere and Liverpool may well be poles apart in terms of budgets and global following, but Palios claims there is one key similarity the two sides possess.
Indeed, it’s a quality that helped Rovers gain promotion to League One and fired the Reds to glory in Madrid.
Team spirit.
“It’s an old, Victorian value, and it’s much undervalued”, said the Whites’ chairman.
“It’s one of the things that does actually bring things and does actually help teams. Team spirit is massive—the whole is greater than the sum of the parts. It’s a big thing that we have tried to build on at Tranmere, and from what I can see, that’s something that Liverpool have engendered as well.
“It’s pretty hard to compete against that, because when you’re playing teams like that, they’re always in with a shout, they’ll always be there, right until the end of the game. We were two minutes away from penalties at Wembley, so there you see it. They keep going.”
The Rovers chairman also picked out similarities between the way Tranmere manager Micky Mellon and Reds boss Jurgen Klopp have both worked wonders at their respective clubs: “Patience is a virtue and is in short supply in football.
"I think Jurgen Klopp has come to Liverpool and, as an outsider, it seems as though he’s taken his time to build a squad that is capable.
He added: “It wasn’t done in a day, it was done over a number of seasons, and he got support from the club, support from the fans and, gradually, people had the faith that he was building that squad.
“Equally, I think Micky has done a fantastic job in what has been done here at Tranmere. He’s taken a squad of players, a lot of whom he inherited, and he turned them into a formidable force in the league that we were in. He knows how to win campaigns, and last season was a fantastic piece of man-management in terms of the squad we had; he nursed it through and he got it right.”
