Liverpool reached Christmas with their home league record intact. A 2–0 victory over Manchester United at Anfield on 22 December 1973 made it ten First Division wins from ten home matches, with Kevin Keegan and Steve Heighway providing the goals.
Keegan opened the scoring from the penalty spot after thirty minutes. Liverpool took that lead into half-time, and Heighway doubled it in the sixty-fifth minute, with Alan Waddle credited with the assist. The visitors had no reply.
United’s starting side included George Best, Lou Macari and Brian Kidd, with Alex Stepney in goal. Tommy Docherty brought on Sammy McIlroy for Kidd at the interval, but the change did not prevent Liverpool extending their advantage. The attendance was 40,420.
The two goals were not the full measure of Liverpool’s attacking performance. In the contemporary Guardian assessment later reproduced by the club, Paul Wilcox singled out Stepney’s saves as the reason United escaped a much heavier defeat. His judgement underlined the difference between a comfortable winning margin and an afternoon on which the goalkeeper had considerably more work than the score alone suggested.
Liverpool’s own selection included Roy Evans at left-back, Tommy Smith on the other side and Waddle in attack. John Toshack was not in the team, but Heighway and Keegan still supplied a goal apiece around Waddle’s contribution to the second.
At the season’s halfway point, Liverpool had twenty-nine points from twenty-one matches. They were second, seven points behind Leeds, whose fifteen wins and six draws had kept them unbeaten. Manchester United stood nineteenth. Liverpool’s perfect Anfield sequence was sustaining a pursuit in which there was still substantial ground to recover.
The earlier league meeting at Old Trafford had ended goalless. This time Liverpool took both points without conceding, and gave their home support a final pre-Christmas victory. Whatever the difficulties elsewhere in the campaign, their league opponents had yet to leave Anfield with a point.