Are Liverpool and Chelsea about to revive an historic rivalry?

It was a modern rivalry fuelled by acrimony.

Liverpool versus Chelsea . Rafael Benitez against Jose Mourinho. Steven Gerrard and Jamie Carragher going toe to toe with Frank Lampard and John Terry.

The Merseyside club had enough on their hands trying to compete with Manchester United and Arsenal when Russian oligarch Roman Abramovich arrived at Stamford Bridge in 2003 and changed the landscape of English football with an unprecedented spending spree.

That era conjures up images of Mourinho shushing Liverpool fans during the 2005 League Cup final in Cardiff and his bitter complaints over Luis Garcia's "ghost goal" in the Champions League semi-final second leg at Anfield three months later. Chelsea's persistent but doomed pursuit of Gerrard increased tensions.

Carragher and Terry summed up the sense of mutual loathing during that period when they appeared on Sky Sports' Monday Night Football together back in December 2017.

"When Roman Abramovich came in and he had all that money, the arrogance kicked in, didn't it? You were a bit cocky. You were, your manager was, your chairman Peter Kenyon was a bit fancy as well," Carragher said.

"Chelsea for us became a bit of a derby game. It became alongside United and Everton . Maybe even above United. Sometimes I would watch United against Chelsea and I'd want United to win. That's how much Chelsea used to wind me up!"

"It was more like a hatred, wasn't it?" said Terry. "Everyone hated us because we had money, we were the new kids on the block. The whole world was against us."

Remarkably, Liverpool and Chelsea met in three Champions League semi-finals and a quarter-final in the space of five seasons between 2005 and 2009. However, as the tenure of owners Tom Hicks and George Gillett took its toll, Liverpool fell away, culminating in Benitez's exit in the summer of 2010.

How Mourinho, in his second spell in charge of Chelsea, relished wrecking Liverpool's Premier League title dream in April 2014 when Demba Ba ran through to punish Gerrard's slip at Anfield — and effectively handed the title to Manchester City .

But for most of the past decade, the rivalry has dimmed. In each of the seven seasons since Antonio Conte led Chelsea to the Premier League title in 2016-17, Liverpool have finished above the Londoners.

City were Liverpool's nemesis for most of Jurgen Klopp's reign, with those contests taking on much greater significance as they regularly battled it out for the big prize. Chelsea were considerably less relevant.

Liverpool have only lost one of the past 12 meetings in all competitions with Chelsea and that was behind closed doors at Anfield in March 2021. That recent sequence of results includes three domestic cup final wins at Wembley. The latest in February — achieved thanks to Virgil van Dijk 's 118th-minute header and the contribution of unproven academy rookies amid an injury crisis — prompted Sky Sports pundit Gary Neville to label Chelsea as "blue billion-pound bottlejobs".

The contrast in approach could hardly be greater. Since the takeover at Stamford Bridge in 2022 by private equity firm Clearlake Capital and Todd Boehly, they have sent more than £1.5billion ($1.95bn) on transfers. In the same period, Liverpool's outlay is around £300m.

The ownership models are polar opposites in terms of strategy and risk. You won't find Fenway Sports Group (FSG) stockpiling players, dishing out lucrative eight-year contracts or selling their best home-grown talents in an attempt to balance the books and satisfy profit and sustainability rules (PSR).

There's frustration at times among Liverpool's fanbase that FSG do not splash the cash more readily, but they invested heavily in infrastructure to expand Anfield, transformed the commercial performance and provide stability, while there's a rift at the heart of Chelsea with Boehly and Clearlake wanting to buy each other out.

Yet on and off the field, there are signs of the rivalry between the clubs being cranked up again.

The Athletic revealed on Wednesday that Chelsea have been blocking requests from Liverpool scouts to attend youth games at their Cobham training centre this season.

It is understood to be a response to their displeasure at losing one of their brightest talents, 16-year-old attacker Rio Ngumoha, to Liverpool last summer. As scouting passes are issued on a reciprocal basis, Liverpool are set to deny access to Chelsea's scouts while it remains unresolved.

The news of scouts not being allowed into Cobham was greeted with bemusement at Kirkby given that Ngumoha's transfer was given the green light by the Premier League after passing a five-step review, which is carried out whenever a youth player wishes to leave one top academy for another to ensure no rules were broken.

The England youth international, who was coveted by Manchester United, felt that Liverpool offered a much clearer pathway to the senior set-up than Chelsea given the latter's extensive recruitment drive in recent years.

Liverpool are relaxed about the situation — if they really wanted to watch a Chelsea youngster closely, they could still attend away matches or analyse video footage.

The legal battle between the Premier League and Manchester City over associated party transaction (APT) regulations has laid bare stark differences at boardroom level.

Liverpool were among the clubs to provide written statements to support the Premier League's position over ensuring sponsorship deals with companies linked to clubs' owners represent fair market value. However, Chelsea acted as a witness for City with the arbitration panel's ruling leading to both sides claiming victory last week as the ramifications rumble on.

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On the field, Chelsea look more of a threat this season with new head coach Enzo Maresca providing calm after so much chaos. They are only four points behind Arne Slot's Premier League leaders going into Sunday's meeting at Anfield.

After last month's win over Wolverhampton Wanderers , captain Virgil van Dijk mentioned Chelsea as "going a bit under the radar" when it came to possible title contenders. Following dismal 12th and sixth-place finishes over the past two seasons, they are being taken seriously again.

The sight of Moises Caicedo in blue on Sunday will provoke memories of last year, when Chelsea beat Liverpool to the Ecuador midfielder's signature. They followed up that eye-watering £115m purchase from Brighton by buying another Liverpool target in Romeo Lavia , who cost £58m from Southampton .

Given that Caicedo has yet to live up to that price tag and Lavia has started just one top-flight game due to injury, there is a strong argument that Liverpool had a lucky escape, especially given Slot's desire for a ball-playing No 6 — a role filled impressively by Ryan Gravenberch this season. Gravenberch arrived from Bayern Munich a couple of weeks after Caicedo turned them down.

There are two guarantees at Anfield on Sunday. The home fans will sing about Chelsea having "no history" and the away end will crow about that Gerrard slip.

There is never any love lost when these two clubs meet but, as Chelsea start to get their act together on the field and tensions rise off it, there is a greater edge to this fixture.

(Top photo: Luis Garcia celebrates at Anfield in 2005 – when hostilities really ramped up. ADRIAN DENNIS/AFP via )