My Top 5 Most Unpopular Ex-players

The return of Michael Owen next weekend, for Jamie Carragher’s testimonial, and impending departure of Javier Mascherano from Liverpool brought about memories of previous players who have left in less than perfect circumstances and had since failed to exonerate themselves.  It is difficult to find ex-players that Liverpool fans genuinely hate, so I am going to take a look what I believe are the 5 ex-players who – at the very least – are most unwelcome at Anfield to this day and what brought about the fall of their reputations.

5. Jamie Redknapp – This man scrapes into this list for his actions (or more notably, his words) since leaving Liverpool.  Listening to Redknapp these days, you’d think he spent no more than 5 minutes in Liverpool before moving to Tottenham, rather than the best part of a career from his mid-teens.  This particularly grates on some fans because of how closely the club stood by Redknapp through some long-term injuries; paying his wages, showing loyalty to a player that is rare these days, and not least of all having Redknapp elevated to club-Captain purely out of some (with hindsight) misguided sense of nostalgia for a player who never really reached any kind of heights at Liverpool.  Since leaving football as a player, Redknapp has gone on to punditry and has spent most of his first few years on Sky Sports continually beating down Rafa Benitez’s every decision. From zonal marking to questioning his judgment when it came to formations and players picked in the starting line-up. It’s as if it was written into his contract to constantly snipe at Liverpool and their former manager win, lose or draw. While he may not be ‘hated’, Redknapp makes this list at number 5 purely for being a huge irritant to reds fans whenever he appears on TV.

4. Javier Mascherano – The Argentinean captain drags himself kicking and screaming into this list due to recent developments. With the actual circumstances still in question he may well be absent in the future but with the situation at the club on the edge of a cliff on an almost permanent basis, his petty and childish reaction to having a bid for him rejected are enough to draw him in at number 4. The biggest negative against Mascherano is that, despite being ‘saved’ from obscurity, not to mention the huge indignity of being Hayden Mullin’s backup, he chose to spit on the (career-saving) 3 years that the club gave to him. And while we can all sympathize with him wanting to be closer to his family, we can also all appreciate that effectively going on strike to force a move is not the best way to achieve this end.

3. Graeme Souness – This was a tough choice for me, as Souness was always a fine, fine player.  He is perhaps Steven Gerrard’s only competition when it comes to compiling a list of our finest ever midfielders but for his actions in destroying the Boot-room; tearing out the soul of the club in the early 90’s and effectively setting us back 20 years he has to be here.  To compound his lack of popularity, he would later give an interview to the paper whose name has become no more than a dirty word in Liverpool.  Souness has since gone on to manage several more clubs – most notably Newcastle – and appears to have found his home as a pundit on Sky Sports, where he has slowly started to redeem himself.  For the state he left LFC in though, Souness comes in at number 3.

2. El Hadji Diouf – This one is obvious.  It’s not just Liverpool fans that hate the Senegalese man but most fans at the majority of grounds he’s played at.  He is particularly hated by his old club’s fans though, because of some pretty unsavoury behaviour and his comments since leaving the club. During games with Liverpool since leaving, at Bolton and now Blackburn, Diouf can usually be seen doing his utmost to get red-carded or goading his old fans with petulant, undignified actions on the pitch and puerile gestures toward his old fans.

1. Michael Owen – As a former Owen fan, I never once thought he could rate so highly as a former player that is actively disliked. He once stood as an example of all the things LFC stand for: class, dignity, fairness, natural ability and an attitude off the pitch that Liverpool fans could be proud of. This is why his defection to the Dark Side hurt all the more. As the spearhead of Liverpool’s resurgence as a European force in the early 2000’s, Owen was the club’s most marketable figure since the glory days of the 70’s and 80’s, so when he left the club for a pittance in 2004, bringing in slightly over £10 million, he left the club with an enormous hole that Baros, Cisse and the new manager Benitez could not fill. The first kick in the teeth was followed barely 18 months later with a move to Newcastle – preferring them to his old side – that further proved how much more Owen valued his England career than his club. But the final nail in the coffin of Owen’s hero status as a former Liverpool player came in 2009, after pimping himself out to prospective employers around the Premier League, he opted for a move to Manchester United; the ultimate insult for Red’s fans the world over. And with that, Owen’s reputation was permanently smeared, and his name all but scrubbed from LFC history.  It will be an interesting day indeed, when Owen returns to Anfield for Jamie Carragher’s testimonial next weekend, to see how fans take to him wearing a real red shirt again or to see if he will go for the ‘safe’ option on pull on a blue shirt instead.

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