Our visit to Liverpool will kick off at 5.30 on New Year’s day, thanks to live coverage by our friends at Sky TV.

Anfield is approximately two miles north-east of the city centre. If you’re driving you need to follow the M62 right to the end and then get into one of the two right-hand lanes, signposted A5058 Ring Road North. To get straight to the stadium you would follow this road for three miles and then turn left at the traffic lights into Utting Avenue (just after a big McDonalds on the left), but there is a residents’ only parking scheme that starts immediately after this junction.

So you’re better off staying on the ring road for a while longer and turning left onto the A580 towards the city centre. That will take you to Goodison Park, where you can park securely for £10. If that doesn’t appeal you can follow the signs to one of the ‘park and walk’ options, or park insecurely in the streets outside the residents’ only zone, where local kids have been known to offer to ‘watch’ your car.

You can get back to Leeds by train after the game, as the last direct train from Lime Street will be at 21.49. It’s about two miles from the main Lime Street station, but Kirkdale Railway Station on the Merseyrail system is the closest to Anfield at just under a mile away. Another option is to go to Sandhills (the most windswept railway station in the world) and catch the ‘soccerbus’ from there.

If you’re going this way you can ask for a ticket to Anfield from Lime Street or Liverpool Central, as this is cheaper than buying the train and bus tickets separately. You can get a train direct to Kirkdale or Sandhills from Central, but you would have to change there if you’re starting from Lime Street.

If you want to catch a bus from the city centre, here is a guide to bus services to Anfield , though the journey back will take a while as the streets will be choked with traffic.

The usual away pub is ‘Arkles’, which is just along Anfield Road from the away section, and has a decent fish and chip shop nearby. If this pub gets a bit too full you could try the ‘Flat Iron’ by going a bit further down Anfield Road to it’s junction with Walton Breck Road. That’s a Liverpool fans pub but away fans are accepted, and I’ve never had any trouble in there.

In previous seasons there has been a fan zone on the other side of the road from the away turnstiles, and they usually sell overpriced lager inside the stadium itself. If none of this appeals, you could do Kirkdale or Sandhills (see above). I’m sure that none of the fans on either side will take advantage of the late kick-off to have an all-day bender and arrive at the stadium feeling over-refreshed.

In recent years several new tiers have been added to the main stand and the Anfield Road Stand, which took the total capacity up to 61,276. This cost £80m and since the scheme’s completion Anfield has been the third biggest stadium in the Premier League.

There are now some smart glass panels at the back of the main stand, and behind it a couple of statues of their most famous managers and players. Beneath the stand itself is the memorial to the victims of the Hillsborough disaster.

The away section is just under 3,058 seats at the Anfield Road Stand, where the facilities are generally good, but the view from the back seats was severely restricted after a new tier was built above in 1998. However, I’m told that the latest renovation has removed that problem and the view is absolutely fine now.

Thanks to Premier League regulations the tickets cost £30 for adults, with various categories of concessions at £22.50, £15 and £9, and inevitably they sold out soon after going on sale. To get a ticket for any of the home stands you would need to fork out for a Liverpool membership, and even then they seem to be very difficult to get hold of.

If you’re truly desperate, their official site is still selling hospitality tickets, but even these are shown as being for home fans only. You wouldn’t want to pay all that money and get thrown out for being a Leeds fan.

Given the cost of the recent improvements Liverpool are sticking with what they’ve got for the time being and no further extensions are planned, but you never know what might happen in the future.

Some of this stuff came from www.footballgroundguide.com.

Tim Whelan