Milner is the perfect character for Liverpool’s hallowed No 7 jersey
Those with a superficial understanding of Liverpool FC will surmise that James Milner’s skillset somehow doesn’t entitle him to wear the club’s hallowed No 7 jersey. They remember Kevin Keegan, the man who set Bill shankly’s team and heart alight, and Kenny Dalglish, the greatest of the great.
It is in times of greatest difficulty and doubt that you really discover who your prime assets are, though.
In the dressing room and on the pitch, Milner is the one who has delivered above all others in these attritional past few months. he, more than captain Jordan henderson, has been the leader.
The images of Milner from the closing stages of sunday’s victory over Manchester City — the hollowed-out face crimson with effort after an afternoon spent extinguishing Phil Foden, a supreme talent 14 years his junior — was a metaphor for Liverpool’s demonstration that there is life in them just yet.
Jurgen Klopp acknowledged as much in the aftermath.
‘I am pretty sure before the game a lot of people thought, “oh, James Milner against Phil Foden”,’ he observed. how typical of Milner that others — Joe Gomez and Mohamed salah — should actually have taken more of the limelight. Milner has seemed a subsidiary figure for so much of a 20-year career which has been shaped by events, rather than him shaping them.
A trial match for everton in his formative years was snowed off. he was sold by his beloved Leeds, longing for more time in the realm of his hero eddie Gray, because they’d run out of money. Newcastle didn’t let him join Aston Villa permanently in 2006 because they’d failed to sign Mark Viduka to replace him. he was eclipsed by more glamorous players at Manchester City, where manager Manuel Pellegrini began leaving him out. More fool Pellegrini. It was always hard to discern much visionary quality in that most dreary and uninspiring of managers. It was a measure of how football means more to Milner than the sport’s trappings that he rejected City’s £160,000-a-week offer to stay when Liverpool made their approach in 2015. City were desperately trying to shore up their english player quota at the time.
The story of a City community event involving Milner and Mario Balotelli reveals much about a player who leads in the broadest sense of the word. Balotelli had to wait half an hour for his public appearance, which everyone knew would be a nightmare. Milner saw to it that the Italian sat in on a media interview and was given an iPad to play the game Angry Birds to keep him occupied. ‘Managers don’t want to be babysitters,’ said a source close to the management team at that time. ‘They want players to do that for them.’
A babysitting role has never been part of the requirement among the grown-ups at Liverpool, where ‘Milly’, as they all came to know him, subscribed to Klopp’s work ethic more than any other player, turning up year after year for the new season and topping the lactate tests which proved him the fittest. Klopp’s creed hasn’t always produced perfection and the mind strays to the 1-1 draw at Arsenal in November 2018, when Liverpool’s pressing was uncoordinated, allowing Arsenal to overload down the flanks.
‘You cannot press with really no formation,’ Klopp reflected that day. ‘You have to have a compact formation. You have to force them to pass the ball somewhere. Milly was the one who saw we didn’t do it right and was quite… how can we say? he was not happy.’
Milner was 32 at the time and three years
into what had seemed to be a brief swansong. The beard is a little more substantial now and he’s more of a fulcrum than ever.
Three years ago, he celebrated a penalty at Cardiff with a walking stick celebration in response to Virgil van Dijk’s persistent talk about his age. Eight weeks ago, he was remonstrating with that player on the pitch after the concession of a goal to Manchester united.
When Milner was asked on Sunday evening whether ‘self-doubt’ had ever ‘crept into the minds of the squad’, he stared into the middle distance, waiting for the opportunity to respond.
‘you said it yourself. It’s blah blah to us. Just a lot of talk on the outside. We work to our best,’ he said, fixing his questioner with a stare.
An uncomplicated answer from an uncomplicated player who went around the houses in football, was handed a heavy jersey and has made it his own.