1986/87 League Cup: Liverpool v Fulham

Fulham travel to Anfield for the first leg of the Carabao Cup semi-final on Wednesday with the enticing prospect of reaching a first Wembley cup final since 1975. Making sure that they are still in the tie for the return leg at Craven Cottage will be crucial. Even a repeat of the recent league meeting at Anfield would be a decent result.

A defeat by two goals or more would surely leave the west London club with too much to do in the second leg. But it is hard to imagine Marco Silva's current team suffering a thrashing that completely destroys their hopes of keeping the dream alive.

This certainly was not the case when the two clubs met at Anfield in the first leg of the 1986/87 Littlewoods Cup second round. Currently Fulham are a stable club looking to establish themselves as a Premier League outfit. Back in 1986, the club managed by Ray Lewington was spinning out of control.

1982/83: Fulham despair

Sometimes it can be a struggle to explain to an outsider just how hard it is to be a supporter of a football club. The emotional roller coaster we all board when we nail our specific colours to the mast can leave you drained. We all love the highs, but the crushing lows often take a long time to flush out the system. Indeed, they sometimes never leave us.

Take the example of Fulham in the 1982/83 season. Promoted to the Second Division during the previous campaign, the club were flying under the management of Malcolm Macdonald. A team full of quality – keeper Gerry Payton, defenders Tony Gale, Roger Brown, Jeff Hopkins, midfielders Ray Houghton, Robert Wilson, Sean O’Driscoll, and Ray Lewington, along with strikers Gordon Davies and Dean Coney – it appeared as if back-to-back promotions was a serious possibility.