LFC - What could have been

[Corndog]

Baros a bit imo, not to say he didn't have a good time at the club because I was always a fan of him, but he had the ability to be more, just was not consistent enough, euro 2004 proved when in form he was as dangerous as any forward.


Also I don't like mentioning him now-a-days but Michael Owen before he left for Madrid was one of the best strikers in world football, who knows what would have happened if he stayed, where others at similar stages of their careers started to excel even further ( Thierry Henry) Owen dismally plummeted from being englands savior at 17 to injury prone washed up veteran by 26.

[dom9]

You've just reminded me. Luis Garcia. Wonderful player and one of my favourites, but injury ruined him.

[PTP]

Baros a bit imo, not to say he didn't have a good time at the club because I was always a fan of him, but he had the ability to be more, just was not consistent enough, euro 2004 proved when in form he was as dangerous as any forward.


Also I don't like mentioning him now-a-days but Michael Owen before he left for Madrid was one of the best strikers in world football, who knows what would have happened if he stayed, where others at similar stages of their careers started to excel even further ( Thierry Henry) Owen dismally plummeted from being englands savior at 17 to injury prone washed up veteran by 26.

Baros - when we signed him i remember reading paolo maldini saying that baros was one of the hardest strikers to mark cause of his workrate/movement

Gonzalez - that was a real blow - i thought we'd found a right little gem - a young flashy winger with pace, picked up cheap, talked about as a big prospect - really felt we'd got the missing piece in the jigsaw - turned out to be ****e

[Lee]

Ah yeah, Gonzalez.

I remember him scoring with his first touch when he came on against Maccabi Haifa (?); told everyone that he was going to go on and be one of the best players in the league.

[Corndog]

You've just reminded me. Luis Garcia. Wonderful player and one of my favourites, but injury ruined him.

i agree i loved Luis Garcia, great little player, scored for fun in the champions league!!!

[ChesterDave]

Still got a copy of that goal against Juve saved on my computer - uploaded it to Myspace and it was getting 25 times as many views as my actual profile

"What a goal what a night"

[jono]

Still got a copy of that goal against Juve saved on my computer - uploaded it to Myspace and it was getting 25 times as many views as my actual profile

"What a goal what a night"

I loved his goal against Chelsea in the FA semi final. The one which was "mi****" according to Mourinho!

[Zapater]

It's pretty uncool to have a pop at a former manager (Hodgson aside), and he did some awesome things with us before it went pear shaped.

But he sounds like a right paranoid dick doesn't he. If that oft-told story about Houllier/Litmanen/Heskey is right....and that's why Jari never got a game and was bombed out.....well, it makes Houllier a prize chump.

Yep, Fowler made him sound absolutely deluded in his book. Given Houllier was an important step for the club, he definitely should've left earlier than he did.

[RedReet]

Momo – Could have been one of the finest midfielders of his generation. Was just never the same after the Benfica match.

[scully]

Also I don't like mentioning him now-a-days but Michael Owen before he left for Madrid was one of the best strikers in world football, who knows what would have happened if he stayed, where others at similar stages of their careers started to excel even further ( Thierry Henry) Owen dismally plummeted from being englands savior at 17 to injury prone washed up veteran by 26.

I think Owen was more or less finished before he left us to be honest, I don't class him as a "what could have been" as we'd had the best of him in his early years. By the time he left us his goal-droughts were already a problem, as was his selfish attitude on and off the pitch.

The most obvious "what could have been" for me was Anelka - I'll never get over Houllier letting him go and bringing in Diouf, Diao and Cheyrou. A less obvious one is Pongolle - there was a hell of a lot of hype when him and Le Tallec arrived, but Pongolle was definitely one who could have been developed into something great had he been given more time on the pitch.

[Assassin]

Wayne Harrison

Boundary Park, March 1985, the telephone rings in the office of Oldham Athletic's manager Joe Royle and the conversation goes something like this . . .

"Hello, Joe? It's Joe Fagan here at Liverpool. About this kid of yours - Wayne Harrison - we'd be willing to offer you two hundred grand . . . "

"You're having me on," laughs Royle, the subject of discussion, after all, being a 17-year-old who has played only two Second Division first-team games.

"OK then, how about we make it a quarter of a million?"

"Done!"

And so Wayne Harrison became the world's most expensive teenage footballer, a lad seemingly destined for stardom, England international caps, League championships, FA Cup winner's medals, who knows, European Footballer of the Year one day in the not too distant future?

Alas, here was a football fairytale without a happy ending; Harrison, 35 in two weeks' time, was delivering beer kegs in his role of HGV driver for Robinson's Brewery in his home town of Stockport.

After being allowed to see out the 1984-85 season at Oldham, where he would leave with five first-team appearances under his slim-waisted belt, Harrison duly reported for duty at Anfield in the company of Graeme Souness, Alan Hansen and Ian Rush under the player-managership of Kenny Dalglish, who had replaced the late Fagan in the aftermath of the Heysel Stadium riots.

In the tradition laid down by Bill Shankly, Liverpool did not rush their protege into action, allowing him to mature slowly in the second team, where his performances were a source of quiet satisfaction to Dalglish. Assiduously protected from the media despite his 'world's most expensive teenager' label, Harrison was on the verge of a seat on the substitutes' bench when, in a bizarre accident, he crashed through a greenhouse and, with the local ambulance service on strike at the time, all but died through loss of blood before the back-up Army medics could rush him to hospital.

Ah, but fate was not finished with young master Harrison; thereafter he endured a series of serious injuries - double hernia, cartilage, knee, shoulder - returning from each new operation determined to fulfil his destiny. Then, in the last reserve game of the season against Bradford City in May 1990, he collided with the goalkeeper, shattering the cruciate ligaments in his knee; the damage was irrepairable. After 23 football-related operations, Dalglish's successor at Anfield, Graeme Souness, gently explained the details of the medical prognosis. At 22, and without playing a first-team game for Liverpool after his £250,000 transfer, Harrison's football career was over.

"The knee still gives me gyp," he explains, "and, in fact, it gets more painful with each passing year. But I console myself with the thought that nothing in life can ever be as bad again."

Liverpool have never forgotten Wayne Harrison, he was subsequently granted a testimonial game and remains a welcome visitor at Anfield to this day. And nor should we forget, for he was once the most treasured young talent in the land

[dom9]

Sad story.