Stephen Bunting looking to continue Liverpool's title celebrations with win over Luke Littler: "I won't wind him up too much - I'll leave it until after the game!"

Last weekend, Arne Slot's Liverpool celebrated winning the 2024/25 Premier League title following a 5-1 thrashing of Tottenham at Anfield. One of Liverpool's biggest fans, Stephen Bunting, was understandably delighted by the success of his team and this Thursday night, 'The Bullet' gets a chance to continue the celebrations with a win over Manchester United supporter Luke Littler.

With their 20th English top division title win, Liverpool - even by the admission of Manchester United legend Gary Neville - surpassed United as the biggest football club in the country. As such, there is some extra spice added to the meeting of Bunting and Littler this Thursday night in Birmingham in the quarter-finals of Night 13 of the 2025 Premier League Darts.

In an interview with Sky Sports however, Bunting insisted he'll leave any smack talk until after his match with Littler, save giving the 18-year-old world champion any extra motivation. "I don't want to wind him up too much because I've got him in that first game!" laughs the 40-year-old former Masters champion. "I'll probably leave it until after the game, and hopefully I can get a result against him."

There is clearly a lot of mutual respect between Bunting and Littler. So much so, that Bunting has even been criticised in the past for being too respectful of 'The Nuke' in their matches. In his Sky Sports interview though, Bunting was again full of praise for the current Premier League Darts table topper.

"He's such a fantastic player, he's brought a new breath of fresh air to darts," comments 'The Bullet' warmly. "You can see it now with the demographic of the fans that are following our sport. He's brought it right down, there's young kids getting involved."

"I done a Bullseye Maths session the other day and the teacher at the start of the session asked how many people had picked up darts, and this was a group between 8 and 9, and everyone apart from one person had picked up darts," Bunting concludes. "It just goes to show how far our sport has come in such a little time."