1981–82 Football League
83rd season of The Football League
The 1981–82 season was the 83rd completed season (84th overall) of The Football League. This was the first league season with three points for win.
Overview
Three points for a win was introduced for the first time in England. Champions Aston Villa finished a disappointing 11th but made up for this by triumphing in the European Cup at the first attempt.
Liverpool made up for the previous season's slip in league form by winning the league championship for the 13th time in their history, fighting off competition from Ipswich Town, Manchester United and Spurs. Liverpool also won the Football League Cup for the second season in succession. The league triumph was made all the more significant by the fact that they had occupied 10th place on Christmas Day.
Their season of triumph was overshadowed, however, by the death of legendary former manager Bill Shankly, 68, following a heart attack in late September.
Middlesbrough and Wolves were relegated as financial problems at both clubs began to mount. They were joined by Leeds United, only seven years after playing in the European cup final.
The public source identifies “1981–82 Football League” as 83rd season of The Football League. This brief keeps that definition visible, then builds a research path around Football, League and 83rd.
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Vocabulary and entity names are the principal evidence signals here, because they determine the precision of every later search. The source revision retrieved here is dated Jun 24, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q4580182. None of the 0 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 1981.
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This entry incorporates text from “1981–82 Football League” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.