John Barnes & Ian Rush cheer the champions
JOHN BARNES AND IAN RUSH WERE KEY PLAYERS IN LIVERPOOL’S LAST TITLE WIN IN 1990... THEY NOW HOPE KLOPP’S LOT CAN KICK ON WHERE THEY FAILED TO
‘Celebrate then forget it. If they are fifth next year what does that say?’
AN early slip of the tongue and John Barnes is on it like a flash, prodding and jousting. He is rubbing his hands, ready for the discussion to begin.
‘You said to me at first how much better is this team, didn’t you?’ says Barnes, leaning out of his chair and feigning mock offence. ‘You did! I heard you! Don’t you say you didn’t! How much better is this team? You cheeky…!’
This interviewer attempts to make a much-needed clarification. The intention was to begin this 30-minute conversation with a debate about Liverpool’s last titlewinners in 1990 and the newlycrowned champions, not deliver a personal affront. Fortunately, Barnes is roaring with laughter.
‘Look, it’s different,’ he begins. ‘If we played this team, it would depend on the rules. If we played them as we played the game back then, we’d beat them five or sixnil. 1989-90 rules, where you could kick people and there was fighting and you wouldn’t get a yellow card.
‘If we were playing them with modern rules, they would beat us five or six-nil. But put it this way: if you are winning the league in any era, you are a great team. What I would say about this team is they have the potential to be as good as any of the great Liverpool teams.
‘What they have to do is do it over a period of time. If they finish fifth next year, what will that mean? It will mean they were a great team this year but not over a period of time.
‘I remember Ted MacDougall being signed for Manchester United (for £200,000 in 1972). He scored all those goals for Bournemouth but never did it again, so who else remembers Ted MacDougall? It is about consistency over a period of time.
‘Liverpool have always been that way. It’s never been about the socalled superstars. People said I was a great player but I was never different from Barry Venison or Gary Ablett. Once the season is over, celebrate for a couple of minutes then forget it. You must have the hunger to want to do it again.’
Hunger. It’s a crucial word. Barnes was the buccaneer of that team 30 years ago: the scorer of 28 goals, including the penalty against QPR that sealed the title, and played brilliantly in the games that mattered, at Old Trafford, Highbury, Goodison Park. He was the best in the England, PFA Player of the Year, his career reaching its peak after he signed from Watford for £900,000 in 1987.
It was Barnes’s second title in three years. By rights, the winger with balletic moves would have expected to add a couple more. Instead, he saw the beginning of a famine. Barnes, now 56 and living on the Wirral, doesn’t want to apportion blame but the story he tells about how they changed from a group of players who prided themselves on never failing to one that forgot how to win explains the wilderness years.
‘Hunger is about wanting to beat Charlton,’ he says. ‘It’s not getting yourself up for Everton or Manchester United. You watch Liverpool now, they play the same way — with the same humility and the same respect for the opposition. That is what you have to do.
‘It took Ian Rush 12 years to score his first goal against Manchester United but he was winning the league every year and it didn’t matter to him who scored, so long as the team won. You do not prioritise the big games. You prioritise every game. Liverpool do that now. That is hunger.
‘You don’t win the league by turning up for Arsenal, Chelsea or United. You show hunger in every single game. Unfortunately, there were teams in the past who did great things but then got so carried away with themselves that they forgot to go and do it again.’
LIVERPOOL have had prodigiously talented players since 1990 but not enough of them arrived believing they had to prove themselves. Reaching Anfield meant some relaxed and enjoyed the status rather than concentrating on the values that brought success.
‘You know what the difference was when I first came to Liverpool?’ asks Barnes, who played 417 games for the club and scored 108 goals. ‘The dressing room was run by the senior players, Alan Hansen and so forth. You had to have respect for the senior players.
‘So when all the senior players left — Ronnie Whelan, Steve McMahon, Jan Molby, Steve Nicol — there was only me and Rushie remaining. With the Bosman rule, all of a sudden the young players became more important and you had to have them on long contracts. New players coming in, not many senior players left. I was captain, I had the armband but I never had a voice. I was trying to say to them it was all about training, not the games. You win matches when you train on Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday.
‘We were being last in training. That is where I got frustrated. I moaned in training as it wasn’t good enough. Sometimes we played and we were fantastic but other times it wasn’t good enough.
‘There was a lack of discipline, we weren’t concentrating. Yes, we would win matches because we had fantastic natural ability but that is why the consistency went. You say it doesn’t correlate that I only won the league twice but it kind of does.
‘Liverpool started turning players over rapidly. We would sign six or seven in a summer. That wasn’t Liverpool! When you get the rapid change over of the squad, with nobody to show the values of what had gone back to Bill Shankly, how is that message of the Liverpool Way going to transcend? That was when the Liverpool Way was lost.’
Now, however, it has returned. Barnes is overjoyed that the burden of being referred to as ‘a member of Liverpool’s last title-winning squad’ has been lifted and has taken great delight in poking fun at his brother-in-law, an ardent Evertonian, about his club’s return to the top.
‘Asterisk champions? Who is saying that, then?’ he says, his eyes twinkling with mischief. ‘Would they be wearing blue or come from Manchester? It wasn’t about Liverpool becoming champions, it was about the integrity of football.’
Yet for Barnes and for every Liverpool fan this title means everything. What makes it so special, he believes, is how it’s been achieved with old-fashioned values. He cites Roberto Firmino as his favourite player. ‘He can do everything,’ he purrs but the chemistry comes from the dugout.
Barnes has met Klopp a number of times but they do not have a close relationship. What they do have is a deep mutual respect, with Klopp aware of his place in Anfield’s pantheon and Barnes exhilarated by the way the German has restored order.
‘How happy could we have been last year?’ says Barnes. ‘We lost one league game and won the Champions League! They could have rested on their laurels. Jurgen told them to forget it and go and do it again. I’m sure he will do the same this summer. Keep doing it.
‘The fans have given him that power, to make the big decisions. Every player, from Mo Salah who is a big superstar, has to respect Jurgen Klopp. If he tells you that you’re coming off the pitch, that he’s not playing you, you accept it. City are the same with Guardiola.
‘Look at modern football. Two managers have power — Klopp and Guardiola. Look how many managers have been undermined. When Mourinho can’t handle some players… he is Jose Mourinho, for goodness sake!
‘I do not think a Liverpool manager before Klopp had been given the power to make those big decisions. There are no excuses. The fans back every decision he makes and the players are under pressure to produce. They are now accountable for the bad results and the good results.’
There will be more good results, that is guaranteed. The big question, nonetheless, is can they do it again? Is it a flash in the pan or the start of a dynasty? Barnes pauses. He is serious now and these words carry weight.
‘I’m talking about them being there with the team from 1978-79,’ says Barnes. Bob Paisley’s side from that campaign are regarded as the best of the best, who won four European trophies and four league titles in five years.
‘This team has the potential to be great,’ he emphasises. ‘If they stay together and if Jurgen stays and they continue to do what they do… I know this team CAN do it.’
One thing is for certain. He will enjoy watching to see if they will.
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Liverpool’s 19th title has been achieved in the face of a wearying burden of expectation, though some would say that the psychological obstacles to the 18th, 30 long years ago, were close to insurmountable.
The still-raw memories of the Hillsborough disaster were among them, of course. The plight of Tony Bland, who would become the 96th victim, was dominating the pages of the Liverpool Daily Post as he clung on to life when the 1989-90 season began.
And then there was the shattering loss of the previous season’s championship to Arsenal, in that legendary game at Anfield.
it’s a measure of the liverpool mindset back then that ian rush does not dwell on any of these hurdles. ‘There are some things you never forget and of course that was the case when it came to Hillsborough,’ the 58- year- old says, from the villa in portugal where he has been with fiancée Carol Anthony throughout the lockdown. ‘But our job was to win the league. We never took it for granted that we would do that. But we thought we could do that. We thought it was our job.’
easier said than done. The team looked inhibited and terribly unconvincing when they returned to Hillsborough for the first time since the tragedy, in late November 1989 and lost 2-0 to sheffield Wednesday.
What did play on rush’s mind at that time was whether he would shake off the effects of illness which had dragged on for nearly two years and rediscover the peaks he had once reached. The problems went back to a bad bout of chickenpox — possibly shingles, he thinks — which preceded his last season with Juventus.
There was a new manager, Dino Zoff, to impress before that season, so after the italian’s club doctor visited him in england he spent time in switzerland, ‘ walking up the mountains, trying to get right’, as he remembers it.
‘i went back too early,’ he reflects. ‘And when i came back to england i wasn’t fully fit. i signed in the late summer and there’d been a lot of uncertainty about it so i didn’t get a pre- season when i came home. it took me a season to get right and the 1989-90 pre-season was the one i was banking on to be properly ready.’
Change was in the air at Anfield. The peerless defensive machine on which liverpool’s hegemony had been built was gradually being broken up. Mark lawrenson had left to be oxford United manager and, though his team-mates did not have the remotest idea of it, Alan Hansen had resolved that this would be his last campaign.
‘perhaps he told us on the day we won the league; perhaps it was a bit after that,’ rush says. ‘ He was a very private person and no one at liverpool made a song and dance about things.’ Glenn Hysen was the one manager Kenny Dalglish hoped would be a future defender in Hansen’s mould.
A 9-0 win over Crystal palace — John Aldridge’s swansong — is the game most often recalled as the symbol of liverpool’s pomp that autumn, though rush has always felt the 3-1 win at Goodison park was better.
everton were strong and extremely effective but rush’s mind goes back to an imperious John Barnes, saying: ‘ He was in brilliant form at that time.’ That day, peter Beardsley, bought to replace Dalglish, also came as close as perhaps he ever would to replicating the scot’s partnership with rush.
one report of the game described rush as ‘at last looking like his old pre- Juventus self’. His two goals in three minutes made it six in five matches for him. ‘rush and Merseyside getting back to normal’, one national headline stated. The win took liverpool top. ‘Yes, i felt i was properly back,’ rush says. ‘We were flying.’
After the defeat at Hillsborough, the side lost just once in 23 league matches, with ronny rosenthal, loaned from standard liege by
Dalglish after Aldridge left for real sociedad, emerging as an improbable talisman, with a hat-trick in the 4-0 win at Charlton Athletic in the April. ‘You never knew what to expect from ronny,’ says rush. ‘He was most probably the king of the supersubs. on a good day he could score three.’
liverpool were almost two goals down in the game at home to Qpr on April 28, 1990, in which they sought to seal their 18th title. roy Wegerle tapped in the opener and Colin Clarke then hit the bar.
But rush’s goal on 40 minutes — exceptionally good, even by his standards — illustrated the unflappability of that team. A one-two between Barnes and steve Nicol down the left presaged Nicol’s cross for rush with his right outstep. The then 28-year-old rush’s chest control seemed to have put the ball slightly out of his control but he hooked it in from an acute angle between David seaman and the near post. A Barnes penalty sealed the win.
‘i just remember that they scored first and i scored at the Kop end,’ says rush. ‘But no one was shouting and screaming when we went behind. There was a confidence in the team. it was our job to win the next game. We went about our job.’
rush adds: ‘i left the club in 1996 and even then i thought the title would come back. ‘There were good players like robbie Fowler, stan Collymore, steve McManaman, Jamie redknapp. people might say liverpool were in decline but other teams were catching us up.
‘What you need — and what we’d always had — was mental toughness. You’ve got to play well in five out of six games, not three out of six. After 1990 we were not making the five out of six. so maybe the signs were there.’
There later became more uncertainty about who would play, he thinks. ‘some people didn’t know whether they were coming or going whereas with Bob paisley and Kenny Dalglish you knew you were playing if you were fit. You reported fit to play if you were only 70 or 80 per cent fit because you worried that if you missed a game you wouldn’t walk back into the side.’
Jamie Carragher would reflect years later that liverpool’s fall from the peak was born of complacency. rush does not contest that notion. ‘liverpool set a standard and teams always want to beat liverpool, simple as that,’ he says. ‘Mentally as a player i wouldn’t ever entertain complacency. i just can’t and won’t ever understand that mindset.
‘But i can see that what we had back then is there in this liverpool team. if they’re playing at Anfield and go a goal behind, they’re the same as us. You won’t see any sense of panic setting in. They see it as their job to win — just like we did.’