Man Utd v LFC cup tie caused "off on a stretcher" row that divided dressing room

Before Manchester United’s famous double late salvo in Barcelona in 1999 they had a dress rehearsal.

Four months before that iconic Champions League final win over Bayern Munich which secured the Treble, United scored twice late on to beat Liverpool 2-1 at Old Trafford in the FA Cup fourth round, with Dwight Yorke equalising in the 88th minute and then, sure enough, Ole Gunnar Solskjaer grabbing the winner in stoppage time.

It was a sickener for a Liverpool side who had led ever since Michael Owen’s third minute goal, but it exposed the issues facing manager Gerard Houllier, then in just his second month in sole charge after the doomed joint-manager experiment with Roy Evans had been brought to a swift conclusion.

Houllier was setting about trying to change the make-up and character of his Liverpool side, and modernise it in a way similar to what Arsene Wenger had achieved at Arsenal. To do that, he thought, he’d have to send a message to the senior players in order to set examples to the younger ones.

Paul Ince, the former United midfielder, was Liverpool’s captain at the time, but he and Houllier never quite saw eye-to-eye from the beginning, and something broke that day at Old Trafford after Ince was replaced by Jason McAteer in the 71st minute as the visitors sought to hold on.

For Jamie Carragher it was a moment which would go on to sum up a relationship which seemed doomed from the start, but which also served to provide him with great advice.

"Paul Ince, great player and a great fella, didn’t have the career at Liverpool that he maybe had at other clubs,” Carragher recalled to the Diary of a CEO podcast last year. “I think Gerard Houllier wanted to make a fresh start and take on the big guy. He was certainly that, maybe