Saturday, May 7 promises to be a special occasion for Jamie Carragher.
Barring injury between now and then, Liverpool’s trip to Fulham will be the day that the inspirational defender climbs into second place in the club’s all-time appearance list.
Currently level with Ian Rush (660), six more games will enable him to leapfrog another two Anfield legends in Emlyn Hughes (665) and Ray Clemence (665).
In a career packed full of heroic triumphs it will be another proud landmark.
Catching Ian Callaghan (857) maybe beyond him but the 33-year-old centre-back still has plenty more to give.
“I just want to keep playing for as long as I can,” he said. “If I’m breaking appearance records then great because it means I’m still in the side and making a contribution.
“I know Cally well and he’s a great man. That record won’t ever be broken and deservedly so.
“I’m delighted to have been at Liverpool for so long and I’m sure I’ll finish my career there. I feel privileged to do that for such a great club.
“I’ve been fortunate the managers have always taken to me. Hopefully I’ve got a couple of years to go.
“I’m always looking forward and trying to do as much as I can for the club. When my career finishes in the next two or three years then I’ll look back with pride.
“At the moment I’m still looking forward. I want to play more games and win more trophies.”
Leaving the club he first played for against Middlesbrough back in January 1997 has never entered his thoughts.
He said: “My secret is that no-one has ever come in for me!
“Why would you ever want to leave? You are playing for one of the biggest clubs in the world. I’m a local lad with my family around me and I’m playing every week.
“For Steven Gerrard and I, winning things with the club you came through at means a lot more than doing it somewhere else. When you feel your family and friends are part of winning it, it means so much more.”
Carragher has lifted two FA Cups, two League Cups, the UEFA Cup and the Champions League but the trophies have dried up in recent years.
When Liverpool finished second in the Premier League in May 2009 there were high hopes it would be a springboard to success.
It didn’t happen. Rafa Benitez’s reign ended in bitter disappointment at the end of last season and then the Reds slipped further during the shortlived tenure of Roy Hodgson.
“I’ve got to give Rafa Benitez massive credit because he put me back to my position in the middle and that took me on to the next level,” Carragher said.
“But everyone knows last season didn’t go well. We had finished second the season before with 86 points and only lost twice. Subconsciously, maybe you think ‘can we do any better than that’?
“The big build up was ‘we’re going to win the league this year’. When you lose two of your first three games you know it’s not going to happen.
“We lost Xabi Alonso which was disappointing and brought in Aquilani who was injured.
A team which hadn’t quite been good enough was made weaker because we lost Alonso and his replacement wasn’t ready.
“Knowing we weren’t going to win the league affected the squad.”
Hodgson oversaw Liverpool’s worst start to a season for half a century and failed miserably to win over supporters.
However, Carragher insists the players should shoulder the blame for his departure after just six months.
“We’d finished seventh the year before which is obviously why Rafa went in the end and obviously we felt we were better than seventh,” he said.
“We were thinking with a new manager it might change. But Javier Mascherano played a few games and then we lost him. A side which had finished seventh had one of its best players taken out of it.
“At that moment we were looking to build something, new players were getting involved, but you could say that Rafa had been there a long time and it was still his team really.
“If you have not done that well for two years, it’s not the manager’s fault. You’ve got to look at the squad and ask, as a group of players, are we doing enough or are we good enough?
“Sometimes as a group you’re not good enough and I think that’s why new players have been brought in this January.
“Don’t forget Roy had to deal with, as did Rafa, the last owners we had. Everyone is a lot happier with the owners we have now and that make things easier for the manager.”
Carragher admits the appointment of Kenny Dalglish in place of Hodgson in January helped transform the mood around the club.
The defender believes the supporters’ backing for the Kop legend has contributed to the impressive return of 20 points out of 30 since he took over.
“I think with Kenny being there all of a sudden you have the fans back on-side and unfortunately Roy didn’t have that,” he said.
“At Anfield even if you go a goal down or lose the odd game you’ve still got them. They are a massive part of Liverpool - as important as the players.
“When everyone’s together we can be unstoppable. You’ve seen that in some of the cup finals. Maybe we should have lost them but we didn’t because the players and the fans were together. The fans love Kenny and respect him. If we get beat now they will probably blame us rather than the manager!”
With eight games to go, Liverpool are sixth and find themselves four points adrift of Tottenham who have a game in hand. The Reds need to force their way into the top five to qualify for Europe and Carragher is desperate to achieve that goal.
“Anfield comes alive on European nights and I’ve been fortunate to be involved in many of them,” he said. “It’s touch and go whether we get into Europe this season. I’m desperate for us to do it because they are great nights to remember when your career is finished.”
Carragher has long since been touted as a manager in the making but he’s keeping his options open.
“If I went down that road of course managing this club would be the pinnacle,” he said.
“But it’s not 100% I’m going to become a manager. I’ve been lucky that I’ve never had to move my family anywhere else and I wouldn’t want to uproot them.
“If something came up I would look at it but the older I get the less I think about doing it.”
No comments:
Post a Comment