This game is remembered for two things. One of the standout victories of a great Liverpool side, and the last game of a great in John Aldridge.

Tuesday 12 September 1989. Anfield, 35,779 in. Crystal Palace newly promoted. Liverpool would finish the night top of the First Division, Palace eighteenth.

It finished 9-0, equalling Liverpool's record league winning margin.

Kenny Dalglish was chasing his third title as a manager. Steve Coppell had just taken Palace up.

Great play by Whelan set up the first, an excellent first-time finish bent into the far corner by Nicol. The keeper was in no man's land for the second and McMahon chipped him. Barnes was involved in the third. Beardsley jinked into the box and was brought down — surely the referee blows for a penalty if Rush isn't there to smash it first time into the roof of the net.

Half-time, 3-0.

Gillespie headed the fourth from a corner after a flick by Barnes. The fifth was Beardsley's own — a flick round the corner, a one-two with Rush, and a powerful effort into the roof of the net.

Then Barnes played a good ball for Whelan, Whelan was fouled in the box, and the night turned into something else.

The substitution

John Aldridge was on the bench. He was leaving for Real Sociedad, and he knew why. He had stayed a first-choice player through 1988-89 even after Ian Rush came back from Italy, but for the new season Dalglish had settled on Rush and Beardsley as a front two. Aldridge worked out that if he wanted to play football regularly he would have to do it somewhere else.

So this was his last game, and everyone in the ground knew it.

The Kop started calling for him when the penalty was given. What happened next is the part worth telling properly. Dalglish didn't simply make a substitution. Peter Beardsley — five up, playing well, having already scored — offered to come off so that Aldridge could take it.

Aldridge came on and scored with his first touch.

At full time he threw his boots and his shirt into the Kop, and the front rows fought over them. He signed for Real Sociedad the following day.

Barnes, Beardsley and Aldridge is the front three my dad talks about. That was 1987-88, and by this night it wasn't a thing any more. Rush was back, Aldridge was the one who had to go, and the last time those three appeared in the same Liverpool game, one of them was a substitute and another had given up his place to make room for him.

Palace got a penalty of their own after that. Liverpool were too casual on the edge of the box and Hysén made a reckless challenge. The commentator said Dalglish would be fuming, and I agree with him. At 6-0. Geoff Thomas put it way over the bar.

What a free-kick for the seventh. Barnes, top corner, keeper no chance. Hysén headed the eighth from a Barnes corner for his first Liverpool goal. For the ninth the ball was squared across the box, Aldridge got a slight flick on it, and Nicol finished first time for his second.

Eight different scorers.

Barnes was involved in at least five of the nine. The third, the fourth, the sixth, the eighth, and he scored the seventh himself. What a player.

Palace were not a bad side. Wright and Bright had just fired them out of the Second Division, and Ian Wright was reportedly a £2m target for Liverpool at the time. Ronnie Whelan said years later that Liverpool never set out to humiliate anybody — if it happened, it happened — and that he told Wright to keep going.

Palace finished fifteenth that season. They also knocked Liverpool out of the FA Cup at the semi-final stage in April and reached the final.

What nobody knew

Liverpool won the league that season. Their eighteenth.

They did not win it again for thirty years.

Dalglish resigned in February 1991. I was born a few months after that, which means the whole of my life until I was nearly thirty was the thing that started when this team stopped.

I grew up with Manchester United winning everything. Then Chelsea. Then City. Liverpool won trophies along the way — good nights, great ones, some of the best in the club's history — but never anything sustained. Never anything like what my dad had.

I have only ever seen this game in clips on YouTube. Nine goals against a promoted side, a squad so deep that the man who gave up his place had already scored, and a striker good enough to be first choice at any other club in England leaving because he was third in the queue.

That is what it looked like at the top. Seven months later Palace beat them in a semi-final. Seventeen months later the manager walked away. Then thirty years.

Nobody in Anfield that night was watching the end of anything. They were watching the best team in the country take a newly promoted side apart, and saying goodbye to a lad from Garston who had scored 63 goals in 104 games and was going to Spain because there wasn't room for him.

It is the highest point of the last great Liverpool team, and it is high because of how ordinary it felt at the time. Nine goals, and the story of the night was a substitution.