19 Mar 2013

'Nobody cares' - Ex-Red reveals LFC regrets. Is this a wake-up call for Gerrard...?

Jamie Redknapp has revealed that he still regrets prioritising England over Liverpool during his ten years at Anfield, and he blames international duty for disrupting his career with the Reds.

In his column for the Daily Mail today, Redknapp threw his support behind Rio Ferdinand's decision to withdraw from the England squad, and accused the FA of not caring about injuries sustained by players on international duty. He barked:

"My last game for England was [in] Euro 2000. I was out injured for a year afterwards and nobody from the FA called to ask how I was.

"Nobody from England cares once you are injured, it’s your club who look after you"


Due to constant injury problems, Redknapp retired from professional football at the relatively young age of 32, and looking back, he blames England duty for curtailing his career. He noted:

"I lost so much of my career to injuries picked up [with England]. Liverpool fans used ask why I bothered carrying on when it was the club who were paying my wages. I understood, and if I could have my time again, I wouldn't [choose] England trips at the expense of my club career"

I remember being massively frustrated in the 90s with Redknapp's constant injury problems, especially between 1995 and 1997, when he struggled to play 20 leagues a season at a time when the Reds had a major chance of winning the league.

Steven Gerrard has also suffered from injury problems over the last few years, and I have no doubt that if he wasn't playing for England, Liverpool would've had a fitter player between 2010 and 2012.

Gerrard should heed Redknapp's warning, and also consider Michael Owen's position, another player whose career suffered as a result of endless injuries. The skipper is managing his fitness well at the moment, but all it takes is one knock on international duty and his career could hit the slippery slope to forced retirement.

Liverpool's captain is 32 now, and if he wants to extend his Reds career he should, IMO, retire from international duty and focus 100% on club responsibilities. Like the rest of the laughably-labelled 'golden generation', Gerrard's time for England is over, and he (and Cole/Ferdinand et al) should step down and let the next generation come in and stake their claim.



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11 comments:

  1. Could not agree more especially after the Captaincy Fiasco with Scott Parker. Stevie G has done his bit and now needs to concentrate on prolonging his career with the only Team who ever gave a monkeys about him.

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  2. Gerrard wont retire any time soon. The truth is, that he is in his most consistent run of form for England and over the past year has been the national team's best player. I can understand why he wouldn't want to pack it in now.

    Not great news for us, but I don't think we can expect him to retire internationally, in the way many of us did with Redknapp (history forgets what a good player he could have been, unfortunately).

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  3. Ordinarily, i would have to agree with JK's sentiments re a player's Club career etc & his International career.. BUT in Steven Gerrard's case i can fully understand why he has prolonged his England career, its not like he's playing for United ala Carrick...competeing for major titles year after year.... & let us not forget that each player has his own personal experience with Club and Country (if their good enough...) so there is always that side of things to consider too...


    As a long suffering England supporter im very glad that Gerrard hasn't retired for his INTL duties, always love watching him play regardless & was very proud that he led the team out at a major tournament as Captain....


    For me Gerrard has been serially let down by his Club, considering how good a player he still is.....i don't see why he should quit England, i mean what the hell will he have to play for next season with us.....???


    All i hear is LFC fan's worrying themselves senseless about whether Luis Suarez will leave in the summer because he might want to NAY DESERVES to be playing in the CL etc....


    Spare a thought therefore for our very own Stevie G....who might just consider that he has a better chance of winning of major tournament with England than at LFC......


    As far as im as concerned I would not be disappointed if he decides to continue playing for England, not at all, i would be disappointed if he decided to quit, if he gets injured, he gets injured, fcuk it, its not like he owe's LFC, if anything THEY owe him....

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  4. Id say Gerrard wants to play in the next world cup and then retire from International and perhaps for good,either way the problem of replacing him will be something that will require a miracle of a piece of genus,either of which seems unlikely right now

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  5. He should retire from England duty. But he is chasing more on his caps for England who will probably not win anything in the near future.

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  6. Let's be honest here, had Redknapp not been injured all the time, we would have never witnessed the emergence of Gerrard or at least not at LFC. We would have seen him go out on loan to Doncaster, Accrington Stanley or worse, Crewe, and he would be playing for Man United or Chelsea today by way of Crystal Palace or Cardiff City.

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  7. Well, Redknapp was quite injury prone. Now, with the advantage of hindsight he claims that he would have decided differently 15 or so years ago. That's a sign of maturing, but he can't do anything about it now.

    As for Gerrard, I often wonder why he still bothers turning up for England. He obviously wants one last chance to win in a big tournament with the national team. Professional footballers want to win trophies, there's nothing wrong with that. But Gerrard might have a rethink about this as it is highly unlikely that England will come close to winning the World Cup in Brazil. Therefore, he should indeed retire from international duty in order to extend his club career by a year.

    The FA, and probably all national football associations, don't care much about the players not available. And they don't tend to pay much if any compensation for players injured on international duty. Hence, the club should have the last say whether or not a player is allowed to play internationally. They pay the wages. I'd suggest that clauses are put into contracts, that the club does not have to pay wages, if a player injured himself when being with the national team. Let someone else worry about that. They (FA, player) could still cover insurance when putting country before club.

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  8. Gerrard wants another 25-30 caps and then he will probably call it a day.

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  9. gerrard as a chance to beat shiltons record and will carry on ,if he only had 50 caps now i think he would call it a day

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  10. The fact that we are discussing this just shows we are still over-reliant on Gerrard. Managers have come and gone, and no one has resolved this issue and there's still no one to step up if he's not available. Liverpool are too 'big' a club to not have rectified this problem yet. If we had more 'decent' options, this would be less of an issue.


    On whether it's time for him to hang up his England boots, that's his call. He's a grown man and has given more to LFC than any of us.

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  11. I agree that he should look at retiring, however he is the England captain, please tell me anyone that would give that up?

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