Power to the people. That line of brilliant Merseyside belligerence that runs from John Lennon to the Spirit of Shankly protest that saw thousands head for the exits against Sunderland at Anfield last Saturday can chalk up another victory, having forced Liverpool’s owner into a very public capitulation.

It may be a small victory given the extent to which match-going fans have often felt marginalised by the relentless march of modern football.

But it is a victory that might just mark the start of a turning of the tide in the way that clubs engage with fans who up to now have been too often taken for granted.

Liverpool owner backs down on ticket prices and apologise to fans Read more

Whether because FSG realised the awful publicity risked permanent damage to the carefully nurtured global brand that flogs shirts and sponsorships around the world – like their bitter rivals at Old Trafford, it is as much Liverpool’s romantic past as their present that is remorselessly marketed – or because a genuine tipping point has been reached, it remains to be seen.

Perhaps it does not matter, so complete is the victory that Liverpool’s fans have achieved.

It might just be that Liverpool’s complete removal of game categorisation and concessions towards providing affordable tickets for local fans and the younger generation, together with a recognition that raising the top price to £77 sent an awful signal at a time when the Premier League was about to celebrate an £8.3bn windfall, will point a way forward for other clubs. It is, at the very least, a start.

It was Bill Shankly himself who said: “At a football club there’s a holy trinity – the players, the manager and the supporters. Directors don’t come into it. They are only there to sign the cheques.”

By forcing such a public climbdown by the Fenway Sports Group, Liverpool’s fans have done the rest of the game a service. It was not only the pricing structure unveiled by FSG in the light of the Premier League’s new TV deal that sparked anger.

Liverpool owners’ open letter to supporters over ticket price proposals Read more

More than that, it was the sense of betrayal that stemmed from the fact that Liverpool fans’ groups thought they had been engaged in a 13-month dialogue only to have the door slammed in their face at the last.

The pathetic explanations offered by the managing director, Ian Ayre, on behalf of his Boston paymasters, loaded with management speak of which David Brent would be proud, rubbed salt into the wound.

Whatever their motivation John Henry, Tom Werner and Mike Gordon appear personally stung by the criticism. It only adds to the impression that many of the Premier League’s club of overseas owners, set to rise to 14 if Everton’s takeover goes through, often inhabit a world apart from their fans.

“The three of us have been particularly troubled by the perception that we don’t care about our supporters, that we are greedy, and that we are attempting to extract personal profits at the club’s expense,” they said in a letter. It is hard to imagine the manager Jürgen Klopp, who forged such an extraordinary relationship with Borussia Dortmund’s fans, being too impressed either.

Given the wave of goodwill on which Henry and Werner surfed into the club following their tumultuous takeover, it is extraordinary the extent to which they have squandered it.

If last weekend’s walkout, for all that it risked dividing fan against fan, has forced them to recalibrate their thinking, then it will have been well worth it. A pricing debate that used to be seen through partisan eyes has over the past two years sparked increasingly fervent unanimity across the game.

In its letter, FSG insisted: “The unique and sacred relationship between Liverpool Football Club and its supporters has always been foremost in our minds. It represents the heartbeat of this extraordinary football club.”

At at time when the Hillsborough inquest process is finally drawing to a close, those words take on even more meaning. Now there is an onus on Liverpool’s owners to prove that those are more than just warm words. And for the rest of the Premier League’s 19 clubs to wonder whether they might not just have got their priorities skewed too. Power to the people, right on.