It’s been an emotional week for Liverpool fans.
What started with a 1-1 draw away to Manchester United, continued with the first goal of the decade for Lucas Leiva, the impending retirement of the-one-that-got-away Xabi Alonso, the Joel Matip saga and the return of club icon Steven Gerrard.
You couldn’t pack all that into an episode of Brookside without it seeming far-fetched.
Since playing his last game for Liverpool in 2015, Gerrard spent some time palling it up with Robbie Keane on the west coast of the United States but will now return to where it all began.
The Liverpool academy at Kirkby.
He will occupy a wide-ranging role under director Alex Inglethorpe, where he should be able to impart a career’s worth of knowledge onto the next generation, away from the glare of constant public scrutiny.
More Nicky Butt, less Ryan Giggs.
Captain of club and country, a European Cup winner and veteran of three World Cups – Gerrard should make a hell of a youth team coach. Whether he can pull off a Graeme Souness or Kenny Dalglish and transfer a successful Liverpool playing career into the dugout remains to be seen, but he would appear to be going about things in a sensible manner.
Gerrard may have charged head first up the field as a player, but he is ready to take a more considered approach to his career.
That would be his former team-mate Jamie Carragher’s only problem with Gerrard’s decision – why has it taken so long?
As soon as he walked off the pitch for Liverpool for the last time (and was given time to process a 6-1 defeat to Stoke City) he should have been shipped over to Kirkby. Shove La La Land, says Carra.
“He hasn’t taken an emotional decision. Steven is determined to be as successful as a coach as he was a player and the only regret I have about this news is that it wasn’t announced two years ago after his last Liverpool game,” he wrote in his Daily Mail column.
“It would have been seamless for him to go from the first team back to the academy but the wait is over and it is fantastic for this generation of young players to have a role model to emulate.
“There is also something refreshing about seeing a member of my generation put his neck on the line rather than a lot of the others who’ve taken the easy option in the TV studio!”
Unlike Carragher, Gerrard can’t be left on a couch. He may kill Neil Warnock.
Catch up with this week’s episode of 888sport Football Friday Live
