MARK LAWRENSON: MY TOP TEN LIVERPOOL LEGENDS (SALAH DOESN’T MAKE IT)
MY LIST OF LIVERPOOL’S TEN MOST INFLUENTIAL PLAYERS*
AN image is stuck in my mind about mohamed Salah this season. it was in the final minute of the game against Tottenham at anfield, just after he had scored his second goal.
Salah has been so good that teams have been doubling up to mark him, but on that day Tottenham put three men on him to try to keep him quiet — and it was impossible.
as Salah ran off to celebrate, i looked at those three lads from Spurs and could see them thinking, “How on earth did that happen?”
He must be an absolute nightmare to try to contain. Salah, for a defender, has that horrible trait where you know what he is going to do and you can see what he wants to do, but his feet are so quick and his skill is so great that it doesn’t matter what you do: you won’t stop him.
Like everyone else, i watched in awe on Saturday. Jurgen Klopp would have hoped for a big season from the egyptian when he signed him last summer but privately he must be doing cartwheels over how it has turned out — 36 goals by the middle of march is beyond everyone’s wildest dreams.
To get to 40 goals would be an astonishing achievement, simply because of where he plays. He isn’t a centre forward. He plays off the right and those little steps he takes — it looks like he is shuffling at high speed sometimes — have inflicted huge damage.
The Liverpool players must feel as we did back in 1983-84 when ian Rush scored 47, which is the individual club record for a season. Now, there was a goalscorer. it helped, of course, having the main man — Kenny Dalglish — behind him but we knew Rushie was doing something special.
it might sound daft, but i don’t ever remember him missing. even if there was a half- chance, you would watch him and think, “That’s in” — and that’s what happened. it wasn’t that you expected him to score — you knew he would score.
my room-mate that season, Phil Neal, hit the nail on the head about the confidence he gave us. We were in Romania, preparing for the second leg of our european Cup semi-final against Dinamo Bucharest, and i was a bit apprehensive about what lay in store, because we only had a 1-0 lead.
‘Nothing to worry about,’ Phil said. ‘We’ll win today. Rushie will score.’ and that’s what he did. Twice. WHAT
set Rushie apart was his ability to do it constantly and i’ll be intrigued to see what Salah does in his second year. But at the minute he must feel nobody can stop him. The biggest compliment i can give him is that you turn up at anfield and expect him to do something magnificent. He is a joy.
if he carries on in this fashion and helps the team win trophies, he will have a chance of becoming one of the club’s most influential players of all time — i can’t remember a better debut season — and these are the standards to which he must aspire.
So, i’ve put together my top 10 biggest influencers.
First, i must apologise to men such as alan Hansen, Phil Thompson, Roger Hunt, Rushie, michael Owen, Xabi alonso and Luis Suarez, none of whom i could fit in!
Trust me, i have agonised over it. But this isn’t about who is the best player and it isn’t in ranking order.
This is a chronological list and it bridges all eras. emlyn Hughes is included, for instance, as he changed the way Liverpool defenders played; ‘Charlie’ (graeme Souness) has to be in there — what a player — as does Robbie Fowler, arguably our most natural goalscorer. Feel free to join the debate.