Part 12 - A Quarter of a Century of Liverpool FC in the Premier League Era, 1992-2017.

The Boy From Madrid - "We're Gonna Bounce in a Minute ..."

In this next instalment of the series, Anthony looks at a striker who became a club legend and a Kop hero, and quite possibly the best in the world at the time.

Originally written by TTT Subscriber Anthony Stanley, this major series was first serialised on The Tomkins Times and then published by TTT as a book, called A BANQUET WITHOUT WINE - A Quarter-Century of Liverpool FC in the Premier League Era.

Covering the period from the onset of the Premier League in 1992 to Klopp’s arrival in 2017, the book is available from https://www.amazon.co.uk/Banquet-Without-Wine-Quarter-Century-Liverpool/dp/1521850674. It remains a definitive matter of record of Liverpool FC during the period in question.

Let’s briefly fast forward a few years to a spring evening in 2015. It was then, during a charity game between a Steven Gerrard XI and a Jamie Carragher XI, that there seemed to be an excising of something malignant and treacherous that Liverpool fans had carried in their hearts for four years.

This was a match where former heroes said goodbye, and as the likes of Xabi Alonso, Pepe Reina and Luis Suárez applauded a bouncing, if poignantly existential, Anfield, for one footballer the emotion appeared to be threatening to overwhelm him. Fernando Torres, now a man of thirty one – not the spritely and shining demigod of eight years previous – was visibly overcome as the Kop sang his name. It was a crystallising catharsis as El Niño had to compose himself as his name drifted from the stands in a chorus of stoic gratitude. Torres applauded and there was a look of something not far removed from shock in his eyes. Shock and thankfulness.

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