I like bookends and if you go back to the beginning of Steven Gerrards 17 year Liverpool playing career, it started with him wearing the number 17 jersey. My first memory of him is a goal at Anfield against Sheffield Wednesday in about 1999. He picked the ball up 35 yards out and slalomed his way through their defence before finishing low across the keeper into the bottom far corner. I looked at my mate and said “This boy is gonna be great”.
Just how great I could never have predicted. It was only 9 years since we won the league, surely it wouldn’t continue like that for much longer. Gerard Houllier had taken over from Roy Evans, things were changing. Owen, Gerrard, Murphy and Carragher were coming through. Fowler was one of the best strikers in the country. Hyypia, Hamann, Babbel and Heskey were added. McAllister was an oldie but a goodie.
Gerrard had struggled with injuries for his first year or so. Groin problems mostly that were, oddly, linked to his wisdom teeth. Whatever it was and whatever the treatment, that treble winning season saw Gerrard catapulted into super stardom. He’d played for England in Euro 2000 under Kevin Keegan and was now on the international scene as well. It was in the red of Liverpool that he would have his greatest moments and they began in 2001.
The iconic goal of that season was his screamer against United at Anfield. He picked it up roughly in the same area he picked up the ball against Sheffield Wednesday but this time he didn’t dribble at speed through the defence, this time he hammered it from 35 yards and it flew hard into the top corner, seeming to rise about a foot when it was half way to the goal and then continued on this perfect trajectory until it hit the back of the net. Another goal he scored against Arsenal was pure technique and very similar to the cracker he got against Germany in the 5-1 victory. Kop end, the ball bounced out to him near the right hand corner of the 18 yard line, he shaped his body to hit the ball on the up but keep it down and with the faintest of swerve, achieved from cutting across the ball, he found the inside of Seamans right hand post…..
I started writing this in January 2015, the day Steven Gerrard announced he would be leaving Liverpool at the end of the season. Five or ten years previously this would have been devastating news for the club but this was Gerrard approaching his 35th birthday, riddled with injuries from playing in that swashbuckling style of his and carrying the hopes and dreams of a football club desperately trying to get back to it’s glorious past. I started writing this that day but I didn’t get very far. The skipper was still playing. The story wasn’t finished. The team that had come so close to finally winning him the league title he craved the previous season had crashed back down to earth the following year and the domestic cups were all that were left to play for. The motivation shifted from “let’s win the league for Stevie” to “Lets get Stevie to Wembley one last time”.
Steven Gerrard was and in many respects still is Liverpool. You only have to go on to twitter or view the comments on the Athletics 60 Greatest Premier League Players and you will see opposition fans reference the title ending slip against Chelsea from more than six years ago or tear their hair out over the fact that a player who never won the league is somehow in the top 10 of that list. The hatred still burns bright for a player who embodied everything about the club he devoted his life to.
Of course, he didn’t do himself any favours. He was unashamedly Mr. Liverpool and had to take the criticism of having one gaping hole in his list of honours. This was possibly best illustrated later that final season when he started his final Lancashire Derby on the bench. He went out to warm up in front of the baying United fans in the Anfield Road end who reminded him he had never won the league as a Liverpool player and he wouldn’t. Gerrard couldn’t help but draw his cold hand from up his sleeve to give one more 5 digit salute to send the United fans into a frenzy of barking, yelping, screaming, fist shaking and finger salutes of their own. I’d seen Torres give the 5 times sign at Old Trafford years before but it never really sat right with me. Torres wasn’t part of that team, indeed he would end his Liverpool career having won diddly squat for a club and its fans who had been promised so much by his arrival. Gerrard struck up an immediate rapport with the spaniard and the way he celebrated their goal scoring partnership early on demonstrated how he felt he now had someone else to shoulder the weight of carrying his club. Torres came and went as did other great players like Alonso and Mascherano who Liverpool fans sang about as being the best midfield in the world. When the promise didn’t turn into trophies and the Champions League football disappeared so did they. One man always remained to drag the club into the next era of hope and expectation.
Liverpool fans don’t need to explain to each other what Steven Gerrard means to us. He started out wearing number 28 and not 17, as stated earlier when I was looking for a nice bookend in 2015. Liverpool Manager, Gerard Houllier was asked to check out a youth team player but it was Gerrard who caught his eye and made his debut in 1998 after Houllier took sole charge of the team. The Huyton Hurricane was soon a permanent fixture in the Liverpool side and while the team were trying to mark his final season with a last hurrah at Wembley, it was Cardiff where he made his name as the Millennium Stadium deputised as the home of English football between 2001 and 2007. During that time, Gerrard and Liverpool won 2 FA Cups, 2 League Cups and 2 Charity Shields. He played a starring in role in the 2003 Carling Cup victory against United and the 2006 FA Cup win will be known for eternity as The Gerrard Final. He proved in that game why he was one of the best players in the world. When we talk about Gerrard carrying us, this is what we mean.
No other Liverpool player in my lifetime has caused more turmoil by trying to leave. Not Rush, McManaman, Owen, Alonso, Torres, Suarez or Sterling. We weren’t happy that they all went but we didn’t stop them. Liverpool, the club and the fans did everything they could to keep Gerrard and he eventually accepted it and went on to have his best premier league season in a red shirt up until that point, winning Player of the Year. The trophies dried up again but Gerrard helped keep us relevant with top 4 finishes to put us in the lucrative Champions League year after year.
There were three serious title challenges in his career. 2002 with probably the best squad Liverpool have had until recent times and a manager who almost died during a game. 2009 with probably the best starting 11 Liverpool have had until recent times but not much beneath that. 2014 when Liverpool were like the 8th seeds against the no.1 seed in the NBA Finals but with one of the greatest players ever to wear a red shirt. Those 3 title challenges spanned his whole career. He made 28 appearances in the first one, scoring 3 goals and creating 8. The second one he had 16 goals and 9 assists in 31 appearances. The final one he made 34 appearances with 13 goals and 13 assists. He played all of the midfield positions in 442’s, 4231’s and 433 formations. He was a 4, a 6 , a 7, an 11, a 10. He was our number 8. He could tackle like Roy Keane and score penalties like Lampard, arrive late like Scholes, score dingers like Yaya and Rooney. He could carry the ball like Hazard and Giggs. He could pass the ball like Beckham and head it like Shearer. He stood over free kicks panting like a lioness who’d just caught dinner for her hungry pride and was about to go for the throat.
My favourite goal was one he scored against Middlesborough at Anfield in 2004-05. The ball was chipped into midfield from left back. Gerrard ran onto it, taking it down on his instep, the bouncing ball still wasn’t completely under his control, he nudged it with his knees, it bounced up to his chest and as it dropped he volleyed it from the right hand side into the top left hand corner with the outside of his right foot. The shape he gets on it is like something you’d see from a tee box in the tv coverage of The Masters with a blue tracer line coming out of it but it’s the work he had to do to get himself into the position to hit it.
Gerrard came on at half time in his final game against United. The manc fans had a banner celebrating the fact their club had more knighthoods than ours. Steven Gerrard MBE took to the pitch with Liverpool a goal down and in need of their captain to put on his cloak once again and keep an 11 game unbeaten record going to maintain any chance of getting in the Champions League places. With the howls of abuse still ringing in his ears, he immediately tried to impose himself on the game by tearing into United’s Ander Herrera. The ball came back to Gerrard and Herrera flew into the Liverpool skipper who didn’t appreciate the sentiment and stamped on the Spanish internationals ankle as he lay on the ground. The team who had overtaken the all time league titles record in England on Gerrards watch continued laughing at the embodiment of the previous great empire failing again in its quest to return to power. Gerrard would get to Wembley in his final season. Liverpool lost to Villa in the semi final then lost to Palace in Stevie’s final game at Anfield. With the season already in tatters, things reached their nadir on the final day when Liverpool found themselves 5 nil down at Stoke. One man kept going and went out with yet another goal when he ran onto Rickie Lamberts flick-on, 35 yards out, he drove into the area and finished cross the keeper into the far corner to make it 5-1. No matter what, he was going to have a say in his final game, still carrying Liverpool until the end.
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