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When the team walked out of Anfield, Houlding was left with no players, but retained the extremely loyal John McKenna, who was part of the Everton FC coaching staff. With a loan of £500, McKenna built Liverpool Football Club. The team were all Scottish, with the exception of one Englishman, the goalkeeper Bill McOwen, and it was because of this they quickly became known as 'the team of all the Macs'.
The gamble of taking the loan paid off, and Liverpool Football Club took the District Cup as well as the Lancashire League title, all in their first season. The next season Liverpool entered the new football league Second Division. They took the title unbeaten, and the team's fans started to grow along with their trophy cabinet. A disappointing second season saw them bottom of the league, and then lose the knockout competition to be relegated. Tough fighting spirit at the club saw them promoted back again the following season. In this period they also changed from the blue and white quartered shirt to the more familiar red one. It was in the 1900-01 season that Liverpool won the first of their championships, under the guidance of a new manager, Tom Watson. Unfortunately at the end of the 1903-04 season saw the reds relegated once again, only to return straight back and take the first division once more in 1905-06.
Improvements to the ground were needed because of the ever growing fan base. This included a hill of earth which quickly became known as the Kop after the Liverpool Echo compared it to the Spionkop, the hill where Boer guerrillas had inflicted a heavy defeat on the British army a few years earlier. Many of the men killed were from the north west, so the name stuck.
