HARDLY ANYONE IN the Liverpool firmament talks about Steve McManaman. The winger was a shining light at Anfield in a bleak decade. He was the man-of-the-match in two Wembley finals as the Reds bagged a paltry two trophies in the 1990s. McManaman stood out in the FA Cup victory over Sunderland in 1992 and the League Cup win against Bolton Wanderers three years later.
In terms of ability, the Scouser ranks among the most talented players in the club’s history. Yet if there was a skill/respect metric, McManaman would score highly in the first category but sit closer to Stig Inge Bjornebye than Steven Gerrard in the second.
Gerrard is, of course, a Scouse hero. He won more than McManaman while wearing the Liver Bird but that is not the reason for the gulf in the reputations of the two players. At crucial points in their career, the pair chose different routes. Gerrard stayed, McManaman left. One is a Liverpool great, the other is an afterthought.
This is the choice Trent Alexander-Arnold is going to have to make in the next few months. To follow the path of McManaman or Gerrard. The decision will define his Anfield legacy.
Alexander-Arnold is one of three Liverpool superstars whose contracts have been allowed to run down into their last year. Like Mo Salah and Virgil van Dijk, he can sign a pre-contract with a foreign club on New Year’s Day.
The club have long said thar Alexander-Arnold is the priority. He is young and could be the face of Liverpool for the best part of a decade. After the victory over Milan in the Champions League this week, the right back was asked to speak about his situation in the mixed zone, a place where the press can talk to players. He declined, but promised to speak after the Premier League game against Bournemouth on Saturday. His comments will be fascinating.
Like McManaman, the 25-year-old can walk out of Anfield on a free. Liverpool would receive nothing more than a cheery goodbye. McManaman went to Real Madrid, the team that appears to be most likely to lure Alexander-Arnold away from his boyhood club.
In football terms, Merseyside is a village and invariably awash with rumours. Anyone who lurks around the scene soon gets a sense of who is right more often than they are wrong. Those who are normally on the ball think that the man from West Derby is destined for the Spanish capital.
If McManaman’s experience is anything to go by, a spell at Real is good for the trophy cabinet as well as the bank account. He won two Champions League medals – scoring in the 2000 final – and a brace of La Liga titles. The Bernabeu was going through its Galactico phase during McManaman’s time in Spain. It was an unstable but rewarding time for the club and the winger. He was bombed out for David Beckham. It would be 12 years before Real became champions of Europe again.
Things are more settled now. The Spanish giants have won five of the past nine Champions League finals. They are an enticing prospect.
Gerrard was sorely tempted to move to Chelsea. In the summer of 2005, the man from Huyton was the same age as Alexander-Arnold is now. He was the inspiration behind the ‘Miracle of Istanbul,’ when Liverpool came from 3-0 down to beat Milan on penalties. That victory made the Reds champions of Europe for the fifth time and made the world sit up and notice Liverpool once more. It made Gerrard a global superstar.
In some ways the situation was different from Alexander-Arnold’s. Gerrard was under contract. Chelsea offered what was, at the time, a huge fee: £32 million. How laughable that seems now.
Everything was agreed but, over a sleepless night, Gerrard found that he could not cut the umbilical cord. Forget the mythology and lies about threats and pressure. The Liverpool captain just could not bring himself to leave Anfield. He did not understand the depths of emotion an imminent move would generate.
So what happened next? Gerrard won the FA Cup the following season. You could not quite say it was a single-handed effort, but Liverpool were trailing late in extra time and had the ball fallen to any other player in the world, West Ham United would have taken the trophy home to London. Gerrard saved the day with an outrageous late equaliser. The game was settled on penalties but Stevie G broke Eastenders’ hearts.
He went close to winning the title in 2009 but Liverpool fell short for a multitude of reasons, none of them Gerrard’s fault. In 2012 he won a League Cup-winners’ medal.
No player in Liverpool’s history – except Billy Liddell – deserved better than his career delivered. Gerrard should have retired to a rapturous reception from the Kop but Brendan Rodgers saw him as a threat and Fenway Sports Group never understood his status. He wanted to stay in 2015 and made it clear that it wasn’t about money. The offer that was made to him was so low that it made it about money. He hung up his boots as an LA Galaxy player. That remains mindboggling.
Gerrard is in the top five of the pantheon of Liverpool players. He is a Scouse hero. McManaman is not.
Who does Alexander-Arnold want to be?
On the face of it, Madrid offers more opportunities than ever. In the era of superclubs, Real are the super club. Liverpool, not so much.
Anfield is in a state of post-Jurgen Klopp flux. The issue is not Arne Slot but the restructuring of the club after Klopp’s departure. Michael Edwards has returned as the chief executive of football for FSG. The position of manager has been downgraded to head coach. Edwards does not want to deal with a charismatic, opinionated and, sometimes, aggressively angry individual like Klopp.
And what does Alexander-Arnold make of the lack of progress on not only his contract but those of Salah and Van Dijk. They are also two players who have Real sniffing the air, although the window for Salah to move to Madrid seems to have closed. It is possible that Liverpool’s Kloppite backbone will be stripped out next summer. Would Alexander-Arnold want to stay if the other two leave?
It is one thing to be a boyhood fan and a Scouser. Things change when you become a professional. Forget what you would do as a Liverpool supporter? Take out the emotion and think about career trajectory.
If Alexander-Arnold leaves, he can expect a status closer to McManaman’s rather than Gerrard’s. Kenny Dalglish one told me: “There are only two reasons to stay at a club; money and medals.” The Scot, the greatest living figure in Liverpool history, made it clear that he would have left if the team were unsuccessful.
There are big decisions ahead for Alexander-Arnold. But no matter what anyone says, his role as a flagbrearer for Scousers has already cemented his greatness at Anfield. And McManaman deserves more respect, too.
Further reading
Buy Far Foreign Land, my book about following LFC from the 1970s to Istanbul. £10 UK, £15 Europe, £18 Rest Of World. All including postage, available here. Or become a paid subscriber and read the 18 chapters of the book on substack. Opening chapter is free here
Other Liverpool books, I Don’t Know What It Is But I Love It, the story of the 1983-84 season in the words of the players. Wild tales of drunken excess, on-pitch violence and winning the third of three trophies in the most intimidating atmosphere in Liverpool history. Available here
Two Tribes: Liverpool, Everton and a city on the brink recounts the 1985-86 season, a campaign when the sport rose from the depths of Heysel to Merseyside’s finest hour, an all-Scouse FA Cup final, when Liverpool emerged in triumph with the double. Told by the players. Buy here
Finally, if you’re interested in the culture of the city of Liverpool, try Good Guys Lost, a novel that spans from the 1960s to the 2010s. Get it here