Xabi Alonso phone call helped Liverpool beat Manchester City and Chelsea to £17.5m transfer

When Liverpool signed Glen Johnson this week in 2009, it was in the hope that he could be a missing piece of the puzzle.

The Reds fell just short in the Premier League title race the year before, finishing four points behind champions Manchester United despite losing just twice all campaign. Left to curse too many draws, Rafa Benitez looked to introduce an attacking full-back to bolster his squad and settled on the England international.

Liverpool fought off rival interest from Chelsea and Manchester City to sign Johnson as they looked to continue competing for Premier League and Champions League glory. However, in a summer where Xabi Alonso was set to leave the club and the turmoil brought on by unhappy owners Tom Hicks and George Gillett’s fractured partnership only worsened, the Reds were on the verge of becoming a team in decline , avoiding such silverware until long after. defender exit.

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But the Spanish midfielder’s desire to return to Spain that summer did not stop him from playing a key role in bringing Johnson to Anfield.

“If a club like Liverpool come knocking, obviously you immediately have an eye on him and an interest,” Johnson said in an exclusive interview with the ECHO in November 2021. “But what it was was that I played for England in that summer, just before. I signed and had a good chat with Stevie (Gerrard).

“And then I also spoke to Torres and Alonso before I signed. I thought they were some of the best players in the world. They don’t need to call me, but they were calling me to tell me how much they wanted me to join. I immediately felt like I knew them and they made me feel very welcome before I signed and everything felt right.”

Indeed, in hindsight, the fact that Liverpool were only able to spend £17.5m to sign the Portsmouth defender, writing off the £7m cash-strapped outfit they were owed for Peter Crouch was an early sign of their declining fortunes in difficult circumstances. waiting around the corner.

Of course, Johnson wouldn’t know that the Reds would fail to hit the ground running under Benitez before meandering through transition in the coming years under a succession of new managers as the new owners looked to right the ship. With a number of key players sold without being replaced, it’s fair to say that the full-back hasn’t enjoyed the easiest start to life at Liverpool.

“There were a lot of problems with the owners, Rafa lost his job and we sold three of our best players and didn’t replace any of them,” he recalled. “You can’t do that, it’s as simple as that.

“The owners didn’t want to replace the players who went out the door with players of the same quality. It’s been a tough few years.

“We had three or four managers in a very short period of time. It’s a failure at any club. With all the issues going on in the background, the best players leaving, the managers leaving, it’s hard to string some sort of foundation together.”

While it was admittedly an unsettling time to be a Liverpool player, FSG’s takeover of the club in October 2010 at least steadied the ship, while Johnson would win the only trophy of his Reds career the following season thanks to the Cup Leagues.

Scored in the penalty shootout = victory over Cardiff City at Wembley in 2012, only the woodwork denied him further titles and one of the Cup final goals when he hit the crossbar in the opening minutes.

“I remember, right before I hit the crossbar, I remember hitting a long, diagonal pass, and I just heard Stevie say, ‘Go on,'” Johnson recalled. “I ran past Stevie and he said ‘just go’ so I actually found myself almost to the left.

“I cut and as soon as I hit it I thought ‘that’s in’ but unfortunately it was probably two inches too high. But he got us off to a good start, fired up the crowd and fired up the players.

“The match turned out to be much tighter than in the first few minutes and we are in penalty kicks. Everyone chooses their place, I knew that morning where I would go. I just knew if I was going to get one, I knew where I was going to end up and if I hit myself, but the keeper was good enough to save it, good luck to him. After the game, a few didn’t like one or the other, but luckily there were enough of us who put our hands up and got the job done.”

However, winning the League Cup was not enough to keep Kenny Dalglish in charge as Brendan Rodgers took over as manager the following summer. And under the Northern Irishman, Liverpool will challenge for the Premier League title for the only time during Johnson’s time at the club.

A Gerrard slip against Chelsea and an infamous return at Crystal Palace would see the Reds come up short in the final weeks of the season, with Man City overtaking them to be crowned champions. But Johnson is adamant that those two games did not cost Liverpool the title when he reflects on the campaign as a whole.

“In the second half of the season we were unbelievable,” he said. “We weren’t great at the start of the season, but we started playing football that surprised teams.

“We’ve won almost all of our games and the games that we’ve won, we’ve won almost all of them in the first 20 minutes. We were playing great football and were unlucky not to get over the line.

“Everyone thinks we lost the league when Stevie slipped or when we didn’t win against Palace, but that’s wrong. We didn’t do it. We lost the league at the start of the season because we dropped 30 points. I went on a run after Christmas where I was incredible. The fact that we actually put ourselves in this position was incredible.”

He continued: “It’s the way it was. In fact, in the Palace game we should have been 6-0 up. Not even 3-0 up.

“For us to come so close and for it to end the way it did, it’s heartbreaking, but we can’t change it now. It is what it is, but we were good enough in the second half of that season to be crowned champions.”

The following season would be Johnson’s last at Liverpool as he left the club at the end of his contract after featuring sporadically that campaign. And the defender revealed it was his decision to call time on his career at the Reds, admitting he already had an eye on retirement as he looked to move closer to home.

“I wanted to try something new,” Johnson admitted. “I always wanted to retire relatively young, regardless of where I was.

“The kids were growing up and I wanted to be a bit closer to home, so that was it. We shook hands and went our separate ways.”

Success on the pitch in his six years at the club may have been limited, but Johnson feels the Liverpool side he was part of was able to gain more when highlighting the skills of one or two of his old team-mates in particular.

“Our starting XI was great. It was a good side with big players,” he said. “Even now, Fernando Torres is not talked about as much as it should be.

“Fernando was incredible, literally incredible, but obviously Luis Suarez was just as good. They are two slightly different players, I don’t think I can choose (between them)!

“Stevie was good in training. Fernando wasn’t good at training at all, but you didn’t mind because he came alive at the weekend, so you’d take it all day. Luis was a good coach, but Stevie will always be the one leading by example most days.

“Then there was Mario (Balotelli). It’s just a shame because if he wanted to, he could have been one of the best players around. He really could have. But you just don’t know what Mario will show up. In games, at practice, in the morning or whenever.

“It’s a waste of talent because on his day he was quick, strong and very smart in terms of his football brain. But he just didn’t want to do it.”

Johnson continued: “I’m happy with my time there and I’ve loved every minute of it. I felt like I had some of my best years there. I played a lot of games there that I feel very proud of. It’s just a shame we couldn’t win more.

“For a club like Liverpool to go so long without a trophy, I know we managed to get one, but really you sign for these clubs because you want to compete for the Premier League.”

Johnson is told that if he had stayed at Liverpool for one more season he would have had the chance to play for Jurgen Klopp and that he was probably a Reds player at the wrong time given the club’s success at its beginning. departure 2015.

And while he wonders what it would have been like to play for the German, he has no regrets about his Liverpool career or the potential success he missed out on by snubbing Chelsea and Man City, and is full of praise for the way FSG have helped transform. the club have become English and European champions in recent years, predicting there will be plenty more silverware to follow with the American owners at the helm at Anfield.

“Hindsight is a wonderful thing. To get the chance to play under a manager like Klopp, of course you’d relish the opportunity,” muses Johnson. “There are plenty of world-class managers you’d love to work for.

“What Klopp has done with the whole set-up and these owners deserve so much credit. They literally transformed the foundations of the club.

“They have brought in some good players, they have their methodical way of doing certain things and they have a world-class manager. They have built the club back from the ground up and the top manager is the cherry on top.”

He continued: “I have no regrets. A lot has happened for the club. I had three or four managers in a short space of time. The owners wanted out and we didn’t know who would buy the club. Players were being sold and not being replaced. A lot happened and we didn’t have the team that was supposed to compete at the top. I was part of the transition, if you will.

“The new owners came and planted the foundations. You can’t have a top team with a top manager and sustain title challenges and Champions League contenders without all the right things around the club being right.

“They are established owners with a plan and have brought in all the right personnel and have a specific way of signing certain players. They had a game plan when they bought the club.

“That’s why Liverpool are now competing at the top of most tournaments and will be for a long, long time to come.”