As One Liverpool Legend Rejoins, Another Joins Our Greatest Rivals!

Two Liverpool Legends

This week has been a tale of two Liverpool legends. One Liverpool legend has rejoined the club in a senior role at the club’s academy. And another has joined our most bitter rivals Manchester Utd.

I think its fantastic news that King Kenny is back at the club where he enjoyed so much success as a player and as a manager.  As Rafa revamps his backroom staff and youth academy, I think that the move to get King Kenny in is a very smart one. As we already know Rafa is hugely loved by the Anfield faithful and bringing in a man who many consider the greatest ever to play for Liverpool can only strengthen his relationship with the fans.

It’ll be interesting to see what this new role will bring to King Kenny and what he can bring to the club. As we all know in the last 10 or so years we have produced very few home grown players who go on to be superstars and its time this changed. Far too many so called “Top Club” these days claim to produce great players i.e. Fabragas, Macheda, etc. Although they may have had the fine tuning at the academy’s of these clubs, can the clubs then have the right to call these players products of their youth system when in actual fact they were poached from other clubs!?! In my opinion they can’t.

I think Rafa has realised that the last top home grown international player that we produced is our Captain Fantastic Steven Gerrard. And the fact that he is now 29, I think means that the Youth Academy has a lot to answer for, hence the revamp and introduction of King Kenny. Only time will tell if it is the right move but for now we welcome King Kenny back with open arms.

Rafa welcomes back King Kenny

Ok, now to the other legend, a lot of you will disagree with me calling this man a legend but in my opinion what he did for this club sometimes on his own back was phenomenal. His goal scoring record was 2nd to none and he’ll always be a legend in my eyes. I am talking about no other than Mr Michael Owen.

This week we have seen something that I never thought I’d see and never wanted to see, Michael Owen in a Manchester Utd shirt. My 1st feelings were ones of betrayal and disappointment and I even used the word Judas.  But after the dust had settled and the realisation became clearer, I found myself asking can I really blame him? This is a guy who scored goal after goal where ever he was, Liverpool, Madrid and even Newcastle (yes even Newcastle check out his goal to game ratio) and yet after Newcastle were relegated and teams knew that Michael would be available for free, it appeared that only the likes of Stoke and Hull City were interested in his services. A man who if he can get his injury problems sorted is a GOAL machine and yet only teams who with all due respect are likely to be in a relegation battle next season seemed to want to know.

I personally hoped that he would have come home to the place where he enjoyed some of his greatest hours. But it appears for some reason that Rafa just doesn’t fancy him. A lot of Liverpool fans still disappointed with the circumstances that surrounded his departure from the club back in 2004. It was widely expected that he would sign a new 4yr contract like he said he would and the next thing you know he’s signed for Real Madrid for a fraction of the price we should have got because he was into the last year of his contract. Now for a man to say his going to stay and then suddenly leave begs me to ask the question did he jump or was he pushed? I heard from a friend at work who is a scouser and supposedly knows someone at the club (then again who doesn’t) that when Rafa arrived the board said to him, we have Mr Owens new £100k a week contract ready for him to sign and Rafa said no for that money I can get in 2 players on £50k a week. Subsequently Owen was shipped off to Madrid and Liverpool signed Xabi Alonso and Luis Garcia, which now in the long run looks like a good move. Of course the information I was given could have been complete and utter rubbish, but you make of it what you will.

With Liverpool having Fernando Torres and Steven Gerrard as our main front 2 strikers (yes I do believe that Gerrard has to be considered as a striker now, in the Bergkamp role) and the young David N’Gog as the only real back up, I though a move for Owen would have been fantastic for him and the club. I have no doubt he would have returned and understood to start with that he’s a back up striker. But clearly Rafa has other ideas maybe he’ll sign a new striker or finally use Ryan Babel in his preferred role, only time will tell and I’m certainly not one to question his judgement as his record speaks for itself.

Finally on the subject of Michael Owen, for all you people who doubt his commitment to Liverpool or love for the club, I found out this yesterday from a very reliable source that up until Owen actually put pen to paper for Man Utd he tried to engineer a move back to Liverpool. He apparently told close friend Jamie Carragher to have a word with the boss because he wanted to come back to Liverpool and was willing to take a massive pay cut and tell Utd where they can stick there offer to make it  happen. However, the gaffer didn’t responed to any of the 4 texts he’d received from Carragher.

I suppose it all doesn’t matter now but I for one will not be booing this Legend when he makes his return to Anfield.