The older I get the more seasons there are to look back on - and the more blank looks I get from team-mates as I try to remember stats and facts. But my favourite season yet has to be 1994-95: my first season as unchallenged number-one keeper at Liverpool. We finished fourth that year - not great, not terrible - but we won the League Cup and, very best of all, Manchester United didn't win a sausage. It was the third season of the Premiership and they had expected to make it a hat-trick of titles. They lost every competition they entered.

Not that I always got the Liverpool-Man United rivalry. Joining Liverpool in 1992 was a major shock for me, as a 21-year-old more used to Watford, the family club. I was never a big football fan in those days so the rift between Liverpool and United was completely alien to me. It was only on hearing the supporters - they had this ferocity about them on derby days - or the local lads in the dressing room that I began to adapt. I could never say I hated any United players just for being United players. But the rivalry became a habit, I suppose; on England trips Liverpool lads would eat at one table, United boys at another. There was tension there and we avoided one other.

Going into the final game of that season was interesting - the title went to the wire. We were playing Blackburn at home and had they lost or drawn, United could have won the title, had we lost, Blackburn would automatically have won the title. That wouldn't have been a bad thing according to some people on Merseyside, but everyone else would have thought it a carve-up. We wanted to win that game, whatever the conspiracy theorists say. We went a goal behind at the start but pulled it back to win 2-1 at the death. United gave away the title with a draw at West Ham.

That last-minute excitement made it a great season. And for once the underdogs were up there, not just Blackburn - who despite their financial advantage under Jack Walker were few people's tip for the title - but also Nottingham Forest, finishing third in their first season back after relegation in 1993. Twelve years later they're down in League One. Who would have thought it? At the other end of the table it was also tight, as four teams were sent down to accommodate the new 20-team structure of the league.

Despite being pleased with ourselves that season, not one of us could deny that Liverpool should have done better. On paper, man for man, we were as good as United. Robbie Fowler was coming through for us: he was named PFA Young Player of the Year and scored 25 goals, including a hat-trick in five minutes against Arsenal. But United always had that competitive edge. You could see it even in a simple game of piggy in the middle on the training field. It stood out a mile. United don't want to get beaten by anyone, ever. They're like that ugly guard dog - if you slow down for a minute they'll catch you. That season they gave Blackburn a run for their life and it was tight. For the past 15 years, United have not changed.

Liverpool, to their detriment, were more relaxed, and in the end it showed. We allowed ourselves too many distractions and once we'd won the League Cup all but switched off. We were seduced by things peripheral to football. I remember Robbie Williams travelling down to Aston Villa with us on the team coach, and he was strolling about on the pitch before the game. He was a decent bloke but what the hell was he doing being allowed on the team coach? Unlike Roy Evans, Fergie would never have let that happen.

It was a strange time then. Football was exploding. Sky Sports raised the stakes with more games being broadcast live on TV, there was round-the-clock media attention and all that money being thrown about. The English game had always had big names, but the spotlight had never been so bright. Chris Sutton at Blackburn became an overnight superstar, and world-class foreign players such as Jurgen Klinsmann arrived in England for the first time. How was football going to cope? It had always been a working man's game. I remember once mentioning the word 'psychologist' at Liverpool. I was later told quietly in a corridor that it was never going to happen, we were Liverpool, and to forget it - all because of some archaic identity that we could never change.

The game had a ubiquitous drinking culture then, too, but football's new image demanded professionalism, so at Liverpool we had curfews 48 hours before a game. There were always a few on the edge, though, pushing those boundaries.

People say earning thousands of pounds a week isn't pressure, but that's a huge sum of money to live up to. I remember players being sick in the dressing-room toilets before, during and after matches. Sick from nerves. My nerves manifested themselves in more convoluted ways - me and my 48 pre-match rituals, a hellish list of tics and superstitions I went through before each game.

Perhaps it was the pressure, in part, that led to the headlines that year: Eric Cantona's kung-fu kick at Palace; Dennis Wise's trial, conviction and acquittal on appeal for assault; Paul Merson admitted into rehab for alcohol, drugs and gambling addictions; Chris Armstrong banned for smoking cannabis. There was also George Graham's sacking at Arsenal, although I didn't pay much attention to it at the time. Now it's very vogue, the topic of bungs and managers' misconduct, but Graham's actions prove it has always been there. Did the scandals ruin the season? I don't think so. Most fans seem to love excitement in the tabloids and if every footballer were an angel life would be pretty boring.

The Cantona thing was bizarre, though. We were shocked. No one had ever seen anything like it, there was no precedent. Would he get a life ban? Could he play again that season? As United's rivals, we weren't particularly saddened by Cantona's eight-month ban. On the other hand, there was the bigger picture - Cantona's actions raised a question mark over the reputation of the game. I remember Babbsy made a comment in the press, agreeing with the punishment Cantona received. Next thing he knew he had hate mail, razor blades in one letter.

I'm sure there were many players who could empathise with Cantona's feelings in that moment of madness, without condoning his actions. Some fans are so disgusting it's difficult to rise above it. Being a famous footballer is a magnified, pressured existence that sometimes threatens to make you boil over. Some of us had reached that point before.

Then there was Cantona's philosophical response. His seagulls quote was ridiculed, but had he been a more loveable character it would have been seen as genius. Personally I thought it was profound, although I wasn't allowed to say anything nice about him because he was a United player. There had been talk of him leaving English football at the time. The way the FA Cup final worked out the following season it would have been nice if he had.

This season has the potential to be as exciting as 1994-95, because there are a few teams looking to shake up the old hierarchy. Liverpool are genuine contenders, Arsenal have their exciting young players and there are teams on their way up like Aston Villa, Tottenham, Reading and of course Portsmouth. I also think Sven will do well with Manchester City - whatever the press say, I like the man. United set the standard last season and Chelsea will challenge again, naturally, but my real hope is that a team will come along and do what Blackburn and Forest did back in 1994. That's what would really make this season special for me.

David James fee for this article will be donated to charity.