Gerrard's staying power proves priceless

SOCCER ANGLES:Steven Gerrard has become so important to the team and the club that he has become entwined, as he said, in its fabric, writes Michael Walker

YOU KNOW you're getting on when a 10-year anniversary snaps you to a stop. But that's what will happen to plenty of people today when they hear it is 10 years to the afternoon since Steven Gerrard made his debut for Liverpool.

Ten years since a teenaged Gerrard skipped onto the Anfield turf in the 89th minute of a Premier League game against Blackburn Rovers that was won 2-0 by Liverpool.

Steve Staunton played for Liverpool that day, Paul Ince and Michael Owen were the scorers; Brian Kidd was about to be appointed Blackburn manager after Roy Hodgson's dismissal, that's the era we're back in. It was so long ago Nicolas Anelka played for Arsenal. The man Gerrard replaced was right-back Vegard Heggem. Remember him?

November 1998 was momentous for more than Gerrard's debut. This was the month Roy Evans left the club and Gerard Houllier took full control. Houllier would later lay a claim on discovering Gerrard, one the player disputed vigorously, but it was under Houllier that Gerard was summoned to train with the first team - a defining hour in a young player's career - and it was under Houllier that Gerrard was first included in the senior squad.

"It hit me then that I had crossed the threshold into an exclusive new world," Gerrard wrote in his frank and absorbing autobiography. "I belonged. I was now part of the fabric of Liverpool FC."

It was and remains no exaggeration. Gerrard said that as he warmed up to replace Heggem late in that Blackburn game, he imagined Liverpool fans asking: "Who's this skinny little twat?" It is an opinion that has not crossed many Liverpool lips since. At 28 Gerrard has become so important to the team and the club that he has become entwined, as he said, in its fabric. Even gnarled Liverpool veterans from the days when they were the supreme team in England and beyond refer to Gerrard as Roy of the Rovers. Great red men talk in awed terms of Steven Gerrard.

People have lined up to nominate Gerrard's most important individual contributions in terms of games, such as the European Cup final in Istanbul or the 125th FA Cup final, against West Ham - "a good day at the office" according to Gerrard - when he scored twice. But arguably the most significant contribution Gerrard has made to Liverpool is that he has stayed at Anfield.

This of course was by no means certain when Chelsea - and more quietly Manchester United - were wooing him four summers ago. "Dazzled by the idea of trophies I looked long and jealously at Chelsea," Gerrard admitted.

Alex Ferguson meanwhile, could not overcome the geographical hostility between United and Liverpool. "We just can't get the boy," he said of Gerrard, ruefully, in 2004.

That May Liverpool had finished fourth, 30 points behind champions Arsenal and 19 behind second-placed Chelsea.

Gerrard was not alone in thinking Liverpool were not close to pressing for the title. Houllier paid the price with his job and in came Rafa Benitez but Gerrard needed guarantees. He got some, enough to stay, but only now are Liverpool believed in again in title terms.

Had he chosen to go he would have outraged Liverpudlians of a red persuasion but most neutrals would have understood his reasoning. But the Premier League, and the Champions League, would have been poorer for it. The best talents need to be spread around to keep things interesting.

This will hardly have been uppermost in Gerrard's thoughts as he debated with himself that summer but the effect is the same. Chelsea might have been so dominant that even United may not have been able to recover and assert themselves. And without Gerrard there would be no Liverpool songs about Istanbul.

These are explanations for why Gerrard means so much to one club. Yet even with this and even though he has talked movingly and sincerely about the death of his 10-year-old cousin Jon-Paul Gilhooley at Hillsborough, there are still the odds sniffs on Merseyside when Gerrard's "greatness" is discussed. Stevie G becomes Stevie Me in such conversations.

He is not unique in this. Talk to United fans of a certain generation and you will hear some criticise Bobby Charlton. The first time you hear this you are taken aback. Newcastle fans are routinely portrayed as wanting Alan Shearer as their manager but you don't have to search too hard to find those who don't. Football fans are not sheep.

With England, too, Gerrard is regarded as much as part of the problem as its solution. In any other national team you imagine he would be its engine and pivot. But not England. Maybe that will change under Fabio Capello. The Italian must have been as impressed as everyone else with Gerrard's Sheareresque header on Wednesday night against Marseilles - a 1-0 win - and watching him flow through that game made you think he does not look like a man who should be marking out decades.

That goal took Liverpool through to the knockout stages once again but it is the league title the club and its captain crave. "My priority is to win the Premier League. We believe we are good enough to challenge," Gerrard said in the wake of Marseilles. "Everyone wants it so badly here. I want it because I have never won it and I don't want to finish my career without one. I don't want to finish my career and people look at me as a failure."

Even the sceptical minority element at Liverpool would accept it would be some new definition of failing if Gerrard is judged as such.

McAllister in cautious mood

THE MIDLANDS also hosts an occasion this weekend. At lunchtime today Molineux will be rocking for the visit of Birmingham City. Wolves are top of the Championship, which not many expected, and Mick McCarthy has been reminding the doubters of their shouts last season when he looked like a manager on the verge.

Birmingham are second but following their relegation last season, Blues are struggling to stimulate locals into passing through the turnstiles. Maybe the visitors will be inspired by the noise. A Wolves victory, however, would have Premier League thoughts and plans moving into action. And a fresh light would shine upon McCarthy.

Big day in Midlands

PRESUMABLY BY design rather than accident, Leeds United's first team trained on a cramped pitch at their Thorp Arch base in the north Yorkshire countryside yesterday morning. The presumption is manager Gary McAllister does not anticipate an expansive flowing game tomorrow lunchtime.

On a day of big games in English football, Leeds's trip to Histon in Cambridgeshire will be overlooked, but this is an FA Cup-tie of smoking anxiety for Leeds followers. Histon remain strangers to the nation and yet they top the fifth division of English football and will enter the Football League for the first time in their history next season if they can stay there.

As McAllister said repeatedly yesterday, Leeds are in "the third division". There was none of this League One branding exercise and Leeds are all the better for McAllister's determination to hold onto reality. But that does not mean they want another large dose of it at Histon's Glassworld Stadium tomorrow.