Liverpool fans woke up on New Year's Day in confidence that, three days after a terrific display in their 4-1 win over Swansea, the Reds could make it three wins in a week at home to bottom club Leicester. A 2-0 half-time lead indicated that another three points were imminent, but a kamikaze two-minute spell in the second half meant that Brendan Rodgers' side would have to settle for a draw, the latest in a long line of disappointing results this season. Despite scoring two penalties, both wrongly given, Liverpool captain Steven Gerrard came in for heavy post-match criticism on Twitter, the 34-year-old otherwise invisible on a difficult day for the 18-time champions of England.

The next morning, his and his team's underwhelming performance against Leicester was swiftly forgotten with the news that Gerrard would leave the club at the end of the season. Within minutes, Twitter had exploded with a variety of Liverpool fans on my feed making mournful declarations as if the club captain had been tragically killed. Quite a few of these were also ripping him to bits less than 24 hours earlier on the same social media platform, highlighting just how fickle and emotionally pent-up the website can be. Within hours, a series of Gerrard's current and former team-mates, as well as many figures he played against and some former Anfield greats, formed an orderly queue to eulogise the midfielder who became a symbol of Liverpool FC over the course of a 17-year career.


In his early years in the Reds' first team under Gerard Houllier, the boy from Huyton was a bundle of energy, proving youthful dynamism in an ageing midfield, although this enthusiasm could occasionally boil over to his cost, while his knack for quick-fire bursts of influence disguised just how little he contributed over the course of a 90-minute game. Upon being handed the captaincy in November 2003, Gerrard grew immeasurably in stature. He was no longer the precocious yet sometimes naive new kid on the block. He was the bedrock around which the team would be built, particularly when Rafael Benitez replaced Houllier in the Anfield dugout in June 2004.

It was around this time that Gerrard began to develop into an outstanding player, but he was often left carrying inferior team-mates on his back as Liverpool, true to form, struggled domestically. Then, on the night of 8 December 2004, the life of this 24-year-old footballer would take a whole new course. The Reds had to beat Olympiakos by two clear goals to avoid early elimination from the Champions League and it looked bleak at half-time with the Greek visitors 1-0 up. Gerrard was nowhere to be seen and didn't get a whole lot better in the second half, even with Liverpool managing to go 2-1 in front. It still wasn't enough as the clock struck 86. As the Reds chased one more goal, Neil Mellor glanced a header towards a centrally-placed Gerrard, who was 30 yards from goal, and the captain volleyed the ball as hard as he could beyond Olympiakos goalkeeper Antonis Nikopolidis, who had as much hope of stopping it as he had of stopping the Second World War. The anonymity of the previous 85 minutes would forever be forgotten on a defining night in the career of Steven Gerrard.

The captain cut a more authoritative, influential figure in the second half of the 2004/05 season as Liverpool reached the Champions League final despite a woeful domestic campaign. With the Reds 3-0 down at half-time against a rampant AC Milan, the players could have been forgiven for wanting to pack up and go home there and then. Not Gerrard, though. Eight minutes into the second half, his header cut Milan's lead to two and he raced back towards his own half to continue the match, thrusting his arms into the air in a gesture to the Liverpool fans to keep rallying behind the team. They did just that as the comeback was completed before Liverpool won the match, and the competition, on penalties. Now there was no doubt about Gerrard's importance to the side. A week short of his 25th birthday, he had forever written his name in Anfield legend.





In the following year's FA Cup final against West Ham, he made a similarly dramatic contribution to the one he mustered against Olympiakos. Liverpool were 3-2 down going into stoppage time and the engraver was all set to begin carving the name of the east London club on the trophy when, from all of 35 yards, Gerrard unleashed an explosive volley that rifled into the Hammers' net and, once more, Liverpool won a cup final on penalties after a 3-3 draw. 

Gerrard continued to be the driving force behind an enigmatic Liverpool team which repeatedly fell short of even challenging for the Premier League title, but the picture was different in 2008/09. The captain was now ably assisted by the brilliance of Fernando Torres in attack and, playing in just behind the Spaniard, the duo formed a magnificent partnership which took Liverpool to the brink of glory, only the unflinching excellence of Manchester United preventing them from taking the title. The deployment of Gerrard behind Torres brought the best out of the England midfielder, one who was now regarded among Europe's finest, by many of Europe's finest.

Unfortunately, Liverpool soon returned to being bit-part players in the Premier League, and when Torres left for Chelsea in January 2011, Gerrard's years of leading by example were beginning to tell. The lung-bursting runs and sweetly-struck volleys were a thing of the past, with the skipper gradually becoming a luxury item in midfield. He still popped up with vital match-winning contributions from set pieces, but he became easy to play against. Too many games began to pass him by as Liverpool struggled. Even in the Reds' unexpected push for the title last season, Gerrard's influence was more that of a father trying to encourage his sons than the toreador who took matters into his own hands. He was the admittedly invaluable voice of guidance for younger players while Luis Suarez and Daniel Sturridge led the charge. This season, with neither of those prolific strikers to call upon, Gerrard has looked totally lost.


He has been described in many quarters, and not just in recent days, as the finest player ever to pull on the red shirt with the Liver bird on it. Considering the roll call of footballing brilliance which Liverpool can boast since its foundation in 1892, that is not a statement you make lightly. You define Gerrard as Liverpool's greatest, you rate him ahead of players who won multiple league titles and European Cups. That might not tell the full picture of a player's career - after all, Scott Sinclair has a Premier League winner's medal - but I would not put the current club captain in a candidates list of Liverpool's all-time number one. 

Those comparisons that have been made with Andrea Pirlo and Zinedine Zidane are also flawed. Those two players were exceptional, as was Gerrard in his prime, but their talents were utilised in a different manner. Pirlo and Zidane kept the flow of a game ticking over with consummate ease, never making a mess of the simple things, and this casual yet unavoidable brilliance enabled them to continue to play to their peak even into their mid-30s. Gerrard, by contrast, would meander through games in second gear before pushing the turbo and conjuring a match-winning wonder goal. In non-literal terms, Pirlo and Zidane were confident speakers who delivered a telling message across a lengthy time frame. Gerrard was the guy who would say nothing for long spells, but when he spoke up, everyone listened. 

For all of the crucial moments which turned defeats into draws and draws into wins, the Liverpool captain also had an unfortunate tendency to make schoolboy errors in high-stakes matches. On three occasions he was culpable of making suicidal backpasses which led to the soft concession of a goal - for England against France at Euro 2004, Liverpool at Arsenal in March 2006 and the Reds against Chelsea in May 2010. There was also that infamous slip in the 2-0 home defeat to Chelsea towards the end of last year, but Gerrard was simply unlucky rather than careless in that catastrophe. Rather, it was the risky sideways pass to him from Mamadou Sakho which didn't help.


The manner in which Gerrard is bringing his association with Liverpool FC to an end is the right one. Even though it will be a little spooky seeing him lining up for a club that does not wear a red kit with a Liver bird on the chest, at least he is not doing a Frank Lampard by joining up with another Premier League club. That, of course, is something Gerrard almost did 10 years ago when Chelsea played the role of foul temptress. It was a transfer that was 95 per cent of the way to happening, but the subject decided at the 11th hour that west London wasn't for him and thus he would continue, for another decade, to be a one-club man. As he said during that tumultuous summer of 2005, "I could win eight trophies at another club or four at Liverpool, and the four at Liverpool would mean so much more to me." So whenever Gerrard did hold up the LFC crest in celebration and give it a smooch, it was more genuine than when most other players carry out that hackneyed gesture. 

Unfortunately, the sands of time wait for no man and Liverpool need to let go. The passion and sentimentality of the club is one of its endearing features, but it can also be a weak point. Sport and sentiment often don't make for ideal bedfellows - look at how Brian Cody and Alex Ferguson ruthlessly jettisoned key players when they felt that they had no more to offer, the managers' decisions proving to be harsh but ultimately justified as the trophies kept coming. Liverpool need to plan for life after Gerrard, just as any team needs to do with any player, no matter how great their stature. The timing of the announcement gives Brendan Rodgers and the Fenway Sports Group ample notice to plan for forthcoming seasons without their team's esteemed captain. 

Unless Gerrard does something horrendously daft in the next four months - and the trajectory of his career suggests it won't happen - he will leave Liverpool at the end of May as someone who will be treasured by the club's supporters in generations to come just as Ian St John, Ian Callaghan, Roger Hunt, Kenny Dalglish, Emlyn Hughes and Alan Kennedy are to this day. When the full-time whistle blows on 16 May for what is projected to be Gerrard's final Anfield appearance, and 24 May in Stoke when he is likely to play his last game for the club, it will be adulation and not abuse he will receive on Twitter.

Thanks for the memories, Steven.