Subscribe to FourFourTwo today and save over a third on standard price.I like how when the games are being played you can shout at the referee or try to get the crowd fired up. Perhaps he, and not Lampard, would have been the favourite son Chelsea turned to when they needed a manager in 2019.īut Gerrard took the route that enabled him to remain true to himself: it was not paved with silverware but it means that rather than being celebrated by Chelsea supporters, he will be taunted by them. Had Gerrard joined Chelsea, of course, there would be no widespread assumption now that his path automatically led back to Anfield.
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In turn, it might have led England to eschew 4-4-2 rather earlier, to install a specialist holding midfielder and unleash two attacking No. Makelele could have released each to attack, without the kind of uneasy compromises they had when paired on international duty. Lampard and Gerrard could have played together, with the Liverpudlian taking the role that Michael Ballack, Michael Essien or Tiago actually occupied in the Portuguese’s 4-3-3 with Makelele doing the donkey work, much as Kevin de Bruyne and David Silva could combine in a midfield that Fernandinho anchored. Add Gerrard to Petr Cech, John Terry, Didier Drogba, Claude Makelele, Frank Lampard, Ricardo Carvalho, Arjen Robben and Damien Duff, assume they would still have signed Ashley Cole and then kept Mourinho and the dominant team of the late 2000s may have been in London, not Manchester.Īnd certainly, Mourinho would have resolved the conundrum that confounded England managers. Maybe Chelsea would have been so strong that Sir Alex Ferguson did not have such a remarkable late-career renaissance. Maybe Mourinho’s Chelsea would have won the Champions League. Certainly, he and Jose Mourinho formed a mutual admiration society – the Portuguese sent him a handwritten letter congratulating him on his Liverpool career in 2015 – and the combination of a manager and a player at their peak in 2005 could have been sensational. He would not have been the greatest Premier League player never to win the Premier League: he might have been a multiple champion. None of which would have happened had he joined Chelsea. He had watched Fernando Torres and Xabi Alonso and Javier Mascherano go, he realised Luis Suarez would follow and he stayed, until his Premier League career ended in a 6-1 thrashing at Stoke. He was fighting against a descent into mediocrity, playing with Paul Konchesky and David Ngog and Lazar Markovic and Charlie Adam and a host of others who were outclassed by their captain. His last six seasons, apart from the unexpected title charge in 2013/14, contained too many anti-climactic moments. Gerrard concluded that one trophy with Liverpool was worth several elsewhere but he only won two in his last decade at Anfield, one of them almost single-handedly. It ended up being a self-sacrificial move. The loyalty he ultimately showed to his hometown club cemented his legend Jamie Carragher argued recently that it makes him Liverpool’s greatest ever player, though perhaps his deeds on the pitch were enough to do that. But while Gerrard faces Chelsea for the first time as a manager on Sunday, the great alternative history of his career entailed him joining them.Ĭhelsea came calling twice, in 20, when they were furnished with Abramovich’s funds, when Liverpool had lesser players.
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