Every big club has chapters it would rather forget, and Liverpool are no different. Some stories below are genuine wrongdoing by people at the club, others are tragedies wrongly pinned on supporters, and a few are rows put right within days. Here is the full picture, including the question many people are asking right now: have Liverpool ever cheated?
Have Liverpool ever cheated?
The honest answer is yes, a small number of individuals connected to the club have broken the rules, but Liverpool have never been found guilty of anything on the scale of the financial case against Manchester City. There are three episodes worth knowing about.
The 1915 Good Friday fix. On 2 April 1915, Manchester United beat Liverpool 2-0 at Old Trafford, a result that helped United stay up. Bettors had been tipped off, and a joint Football League and FA commission later found the score had been prearranged so players could win money on it. In December 1915, four Liverpool players, Jackie Sheldon, Tom Miller, Bob Pursell and Tom Fairfoul, were banned for life along with three United players. The FA stated there had never been any allegation against the clubs or their officials, and most of the bans were lifted after the First World War.
The Manchester City scouting database. In 2019 it emerged that Liverpool had paid City £1m in a confidential settlement in 2013. City alleged that Liverpool staff, several of whom had recently moved from City, used a City scout’s login to access City’s Scout7 scouting database hundreds of times between June 2012 and February 2013. The settlement was agreed without Liverpool or the individuals accepting liability or wrongdoing, and the claims were never tested in court. The FA looked into it and closed its inquiry in February 2020, citing the age of the allegations and the settlement.
The Stoke academy approach. In April 2017 the Premier League fined Liverpool £100,000 and banned the club from registering academy players from other English clubs for two years, with the second year suspended. Liverpool had admitted offering a 12-year-old Stoke City player inducements, including paying for travel to Anfield and offering to pay school fees, which the rules forbid.
That is the full record. Nothing on it involves fixing results as a club, misstating accounts or breaching spending rules.
Why everyone is talking about cheating in 2026
The searches have spiked because of Manchester City, not Liverpool. On 29 September 2026 the Premier League confirmed that an independent commission had found City guilty of all the charges of breaching its financial rules between 2009/10 and 2017/18, including “sham” sponsorship contracts and misstated accounts, and of most of the charges of failing to co-operate with the investigation. City deny wrongdoing and lodged an appeal on 2 October. Any sanction will be decided at a separate hearing.
When City came to Anfield on 11 October, the Kop greeted them with chants of “cheats” and a wall of banners. City won 3-0 after Ryan Gravenberch was sent off. For many Liverpool fans the verdict reopens old wounds. Liverpool finished second to City in 2013/14, a season inside the period covered by the charges, and Klopp’s side later lost two famously close title races to Pep Guardiola’s team. Whatever happens on appeal, City fans pointing at the scouting database row are comparing very different things: one confidential civil settlement between two clubs against a Premier League commission finding rule-breaking across nine seasons.
Hillsborough: a cover-up, not a club scandal
Hillsborough does not belong on a list of Liverpool scandals, and it is included here only because search engines often lump it in. On 15 April 1989, at the FA Cup semi-final against Nottingham Forest, 97 Liverpool supporters were unlawfully killed. The scandal was what came next, and it was committed by others.
In 2012 the Hillsborough Independent Panel found that 164 police statements had been substantially altered, 116 of them to remove or change comments unfavourable to South Yorkshire Police. The then Prime Minister apologised in the Commons for a “double injustice”. In 2016 new inquests concluded that the fans were unlawfully killed and that supporters’ behaviour did not contribute to the danger. In 2021 Andrew Devine, who had lived with severe injuries since 1989, was ruled the 97th victim.
For decades the families and survivors were blamed for a disaster they did nothing to cause. Their fight for truth and justice is one of the most important campaigns in British public life, and it continues today.
Bruce Grobbelaar and the match-fixing allegations
In November 1994 a national newspaper accused Bruce Grobbelaar of taking bribes to fix matches, including a 3-0 defeat by Newcastle in November 1993 while he was Liverpool’s goalkeeper. By then he had moved to Southampton. He faced two criminal trials in 1997; the first jury could not agree, and he was cleared at the retrial along with John Fashanu, Hans Segers and businessman Richard Lim.
He then sued for libel and won £85,000 in 1999, but the Court of Appeal overturned that verdict. In 2002 the House of Lords reinstated the jury’s verdict but cut his damages to £1, ruling that while it had not been shown he actually let in goals, he had accepted money in a way no honest footballer would. It is a murky story with no clear winners.
Luis Suárez and Patrice Evra
In October 2011 Luis Suárez racially abused Manchester United’s Patrice Evra during a match at Anfield. In December an FA commission found the charge proved, banned him for eight matches and fined him £40,000. Liverpool’s response was the real low point: players and staff wore T-shirts supporting Suárez before a match at Wigan days later, and the club was widely criticised for it. Suárez then refused to shake Evra’s hand at Old Trafford in February 2012, and later apologised.
Backing a player is one thing; the way the club handled a racism case was another, and it got it badly wrong.
The bites
Suárez also gave the world one of football’s strangest disciplinary records. He had already been banned for seven matches in the Netherlands in 2010 for biting PSV’s Otman Bakkal. In April 2013 he bit Chelsea’s Branislav Ivanović at Anfield and was banned for 10 games. Then, at the 2014 World Cup, while still a Liverpool player, he bit Italy’s Giorgio Chiellini and was banned by FIFA for four months and nine international matches. He joined Barcelona that summer.
Craig Bellamy and the golf club
In February 2007, at a training camp in the Algarve, Craig Bellamy attacked team-mate John Arne Riise with a golf club after a row on a night out. Rafael Benítez fined him two weeks’ wages. Days later, on 21 February, both men scored as Liverpool won 2-1 at Barcelona, and Bellamy celebrated with a golf swing. It is the one story on this list that Liverpool fans can laugh about.
The owners’ own goals: tickets, furlough and the Super League
Some of the biggest rows of the modern era have been between fans and Fenway Sports Group, and in each case supporters won.
£77 tickets, 2016. In February 2016, around 10,000 fans walked out in the 77th minute of a 2-2 draw with Sunderland in protest at plans for £77 tickets. Within days the owners scrapped the plan, froze prices for two seasons and apologised.
Furlough, 2020. In April 2020, at the start of the pandemic, the club announced it would use the government’s furlough scheme for some non-playing staff. After a fierce backlash, it reversed the decision on 6 April. Chief executive Peter Moore wrote that the club had “came to the wrong conclusion” and was “truly sorry”.
The European Super League, 2021. On 18 April 2021, Liverpool were named among 12 founding clubs of a breakaway Super League. After a furious reaction from supporters, all six English clubs pulled out within two days. John W Henry recorded a video apology on 21 April, telling supporters “I let you down”.
Paris 2022: blamed, then cleared
At the 2022 Champions League final in Paris, Liverpool fans faced dangerous crowding outside the stadium, and UEFA and French officials initially blamed ticketless supporters. An independent review in February 2023 found UEFA bore primary responsibility for failures that nearly caused a disaster, and found no evidence for the claims against supporters. UEFA apologised. Like Hillsborough, it is a story about how Liverpool fans were treated, not about wrongdoing by the club.
The bottom line
Liverpool’s history includes real wrongdoing: the 1915 fix, the Suárez affair, the City database settlement and the academy breach. It also includes two great injustices done to Liverpool supporters, at Hillsborough and in Paris. When people ask whether Liverpool have ever cheated, the answer deserves the facts rather than a slogan.