Liverpool has won the Premier League again. This time, fans can finally celebrate properly

CNN Anfield stadium announcer George Sephton can count on one hand the number of Liverpool home games he has missed since his first day on the job on August During his first two decades in front of the mic Sephton got used to announcing Liverpool as the champion of England the club won a remarkable First Division titles between and to add to the seven it had already won up to that point Had you narrated him then that it would be another years before he could call the Reds champions of England again you might have noted a hint of surprise in his response I d have commented you were crackers he laughs in an interview with CNN Sports After the triumph in the following season we didn t get anywhere And then it goes on each season and you re thinking It can t go on much longer It can t go on It just can t go on And it went on Bittersweet domination Had you notified him the manner in which Liverpool would definitively claim its th league title that surprise would have turned to disbelief In March with the Reds points clear at the top of the table under legendary manager J rgen Klopp they looked almost certain to become English champions for the first time since the First Division was rebranded as the Premier League But then Covid- struck the world went into lockdown and the league was halted It would resume three months later but not as fans knew it Sephton reinstated in his box in one corner of Anfield played music and made announcements but did so to an empty stadium With English soccer remaining behind closed doors and pubs still closed fans watched from their homes as the players got their hands on the trophy that had eluded Liverpool for so long It was spooky I remember I came home from the last encounter when we picked up the trophy at Anfield behind closed doors Sephton recalls I d just been to a dinner where Peter Moore who was CEO at the time he stood up and explained that Liverpool had a billion followers worldwide Then on that night there were people inside Anfield including all the Sky TV crew and whatever I was so privileged to be there but it was so disappointing for the rest of the Anfield faithful people who have been coming for years and couldn t get in to see it It was awful Among that Anfield faithful is Neil Atkinson host and CEO of The Anfield Wrap Of class something was lost and the whole situation is covered with sadness he tells CNN People made life decisions around wanting to be in Liverpool for the moment that Liverpool won the league And then effectively it wasn t the same It wasn t what it was meant to be That s not to say that Liverpool supporters spent that moment feeling sorry for themselves I think that everyone made the best of the circumstance that they located themselves in says Atkinson who spent the night with a small group of friends social distancing on the beach drinking setting off fireworks and listening to Nessun Dorma an aria from Giacomo Puccini s opera Turandot majority of famously sung by Luciano Pavarotti I ll remember that for the rest of my life in a really weird way he adds I hope that Liverpool win the next league titles and we ll never celebrate any of them like that Chris Pajak co-founder of fan channel The Redmen TV remembers hearing the news that the Premier League would be put on hold We never really knew if it would start again he tells CNN Sports Were we ever going to win the Premier League Were we that cursed that we d never be able to lift it When the league did resume platforms like The Redmen TV and The Anfield Wrap became one of the only solutions for supporters to experience the collective spirit that so a multitude of craved during one of the biggest moments in the club s history Pajak formed a Covid sponsorship bubble with best friend and fellow co-founder Paul Machin and their live watchalongs garnered viewers at a time I got a different experience to apparently a lot of other fans because I felt that togetherness Pajak reflects But I also felt a little bit hollow because we didn t get to celebrate it as fans It was a hollowness that a large number of believe has extended into seasons since I think it has affected fans certainly I think we kind of felt cheated to be honest says Pajak We didn t get a parade for a start We didn t get to congregate en masse and show our love for the side the squad and everyone who works behind the scenes And I think a lot of people felt a little bit jaded by that and that may have been a bit of a hangover into the next sparse years as well The following season would prove challenging at times With stadiums still closed to supporters an injury-ridden Liverpool would fall to a club-record six straight losses at home between January and March Sephton believes the absence of fans was felt more keenly at Anfield than anywhere else in the country Liverpool have got the best supporters in the business bar none he says So the fact that we didn t have any supporters in the place meant that we lost more than all the other clubs in terms of background atmosphere Atkinson is on the same page Chosen players suited empty stadia specific players didn t suit empty stadia he says I would argue because of unit I would but I think there s a fair body of evidence that J rgen Klopp had done an excellent job of building a squad of footballers who enjoyed emotional football Fans were slowly allowed back into stadiums over the syllabus of that - season and Liverpool was far from unsuccessful in the years that followed winning an FA Cup and two EFL Cups as well as coming to within two games of an unprecedented quadruple in But by the time Klopp departed in May there was a nagging feeling among specific supporters that arguably the greatest organization in the club s history had not managed to win or celebrate as much as it should have done After nearly nine years with its iconic manager the club would now enter a new chapter under relative unknown Arne Slot Big shoes to fill The consensus among Sephton Atkinson and Pajak is that the band Slot inherited cannot quite compare to the one Klopp had in - There is the sense that this is a squad at the start of its journey rather than one which had been on the verge of a league title for at least a year Preseason predictions from journalists and pundits reflected that sentiment with very sparse forecasting Liverpool to finish above Manchester City or Arsenal In several strategies it is easy to see why there was a degree of uncertainty around Slot Winning the league in your first season as a Premier League manager is by all accounts really hard Only four managers prior to Slot Jos Mourinho Carlo Ancelotti Manuel Pellegrini and Antonio Conte have ever managed to achieve the feat And yet with Manchester City and Arsenal both suffering disappointing seasons in the league no one has been able to get close to Liverpool this season It is J rgen s squad but Slot s got more out of J rgen s squad than J rgen could and I didn t think that would be accomplishable at the end of the season last year says Pajak Sephton too has been pleasantly surprised by what he has seen from the Reds over the past nine months But Atkinson sees it differently I m not surprised with Liverpool s points total after this a great number of games I am surprised at everyone else s he says For me the players are everything so if Arne Slot had done a reasonable job I d have expected them to get around again as the group managed in - But if Arne Slot had done a very good job which he has then I think where Liverpool are isn t unreasonable Closure In numerous methods Liverpool is back where it was five years ago it has again strolled to a league title powered by the likes of Mohamed Salah and Virgil van Dijk And yet for greater part supporters the conclusion to this season feels like something else entirely It ll be entirely different because there ll be so a multitude of people who ve never seen it before never seen us win it says Sephton speaking ahead of Sunday s emphatic - success against Tottenham which sealed the title with flair There ll be lots of people who missed out in and for them it ll be particular sort of closure Pajak shares the sense that Liverpool supporters are almost celebrating two league titles at once When it did happen last time it wasn t like that incredible release of emotion I think I expected it to be I almost feel like thinking about the present day that really this might give us that release after all these years he explains I genuinely can t wait for the last event of the season where we get to do a true lap of appreciation with the players going around lifting the trophy and that I think at that point you ll be thinking about people who have been on the journey with you particular people who may have passed who won t get to have seen them lift the Premier League Pajak adds So yeah I m gonna be a mess by the sounds of it For Atkinson it isn t so much about the moment the title is substantiated or even the moment van Dijk lifts the trophy We ll get that moment and that moment will be great he tells CNN ahead of the win against Tottenham But it s more that sense of communal peaceful satisfaction That was what we lost that long summer of meeting up talking about it You ve not only won the league for one day he adds The winning of the league is the same as - The having won the league will be perfectly different And that s the thing I m preponderance excited about The memories of while they are tangled up with all the uncertainty and pain and what-ifs of the pandemic are not bad memories The giddy contentment of live watchalongs and Nessun Dorma remains mostly intact But there s nothing quite like an entire city celebrating together