Why couldn't I have been born 20 years earlier? The world welcomed me in 1977, the year Liverpool won its first European Cup and 10th league championship.
By the time I was old enough to really discover the joys of English football, the club I adopted was just ending a remarkable period of dominance and polishing its record 18th title.
What great timing. Compare that with an older colleague who followed Manchester United through the bleak 1980s and has had his patience rewarded with a flood of trophies since 1993.
Now United is officially the most successful club in England, having secured its 19th league title.
It had a measly seven when Liverpool won its 18th in 1990.
Imagine how ridiculous you would have sounded back then had you predicted what was going to happen.
Let's look at the differences between 1990 and 2011 to put United's win in perspective.
The name
1990: The scarily simple First Division. Followed by (gasp) the Second Division, the Third Division and the Fourth Division.
2011: The Premier League. Coined in 1992 when the First Division clubs voted to break off from the league to get lucrative television rights. Now followed by the Championship, League One and League Two. Perfectly sensible.
Johnny Foreigner
1990: Most major clubs had one or two, at most, players born outside Britain or Ireland.
2011: Are there any English players left? Big clubs like Arsenal and Chelsea have 20-plus foreigners on the books. More than half the Premier League clubs can field an all-foreign starting line-up. Arsenal did that for the first time in 2005.
Working class man
1990: Your average football fan was called Harold, Stan, Jimmy or Charlie. He smoked, had a job that made his hands dirty, preferred to stand on the terraces and paid about three quid for a ticket.
2011: Football has reached the middle classes. Stadiums are nicer and have no terraces. The cold pies have been replaced by prawn sandwiches, the lager by chardonnay. Going to Old Trafford will cost you 30-40 for a ticket.
Fever pitch
1990: Just a useful phrase.
2011: Nick Hornby's 1992 book detailed his love for Arsenal and gave football fans a fresh voice. It could be seen as the first step in making football sexy again.
TV
1990: Football was just awakening to the magic of television, but the deals were small and the live games were limited.
2011: Ka-ching! The formation of the Premier League led to a cosy relationship with Sky Sport. Now, the bigger clubs wallow in TV money - estimated at 1.2 billion over three seasons.
Expensive players
1990: Spurs sold Chris Waddle to Marseille for £4.25 million.
2011: Two years after selling Cristiano Ronaldo to Real Madrid for 80 million, Manchester United could field a team including Rio Ferdinand (cost £33 million), Dimitar Berbatov ( £30 million), Wayne Rooney ( £25.6 million) and Michael Carrick ( £18 million).
The contenders
1990: Liverpool came from behind to beat Aston Villa, with Spurs third and Arsenal fourth. Southampton, Wimbledon, Nottingham Forest and Norwich all finished in the top half. United was 13th.
2011: A top three and then daylight. Since the formation of the Premier League, United has won 12 of the 19 titles.
Steak and eggs
1990: The ideal pre-game breakfast.
2011: Off the menu. Arsenal manager Arsene Wenger pioneered the shift to proper nutrition for elite footballers.
