Liverpool need a new hero to replace Steven Gerrard, says Johnny Phillips

Soccer Saturday's Johnny Phillips says Liverpool need a new hero next season in Steven Gerrard's absence.

Fans need heroes. This is especially true of young fans, those just starting out following the game in an age of innocence before embarking on a lifetime of hope, despair, joy and frustration and all the other emotions that go with supporting a football team.

They need a hero to identify with, to look up to, to idolise. As Liverpool limp towards the end of a season that has petered out alarmingly, the two remaining narratives surround players at different ends of their careers linked by the hero factor.

Liverpool, more than any other club in my lifetime, has had a supply of iconic heroes; those who have hung around long enough to have captured the imagination of their youngest supporters.

When I was a kid growing up in the city, the Red side of our schoolyard was spoilt for choice. Dalglish, Rush, Souness, Molby. Take your pick. These were exciting players in a fantastic team. But as their collective star faded and the Eighties moved into the Nineties the supply, whilst leaner, never dried up.

You don’t have to canvas opinion of many supporters before finding one who tells you John Barnes was the greatest player ever to put on a Liverpool shirt. The European ban hit the city’s two clubs hard and Barnes’s achievements, unlike those of the previous generation, were largely confined to domestic success. But he was arguably the most gifted of all.

Then came Robbie Fowler. Made in Liverpool and christened ‘God’ by supporters. He had everything you could wish for in a forward and his strike partnership with Stan Collymore was, for a short time, the deadliest in the club’s history.

Later, Fowler didn’t always enjoy the trust of manager Gerard Houllier and as the Nineties became the Noughties, the clean cut Michael Owen was the new poster boy. Owen set about scoring goals with even more hunger than his predecessor and if his career since leaving Anfield sullied his heroics in supporters’ minds it shouldn’t be forgotten that while he was at the club he was a true star.

And so onto Steven Gerrard, whose achievements have endured until now. Gerrard has been Liverpool’s sole poster boy for the last decade. The talents of Torres and Suarez have come and gone too swiftly to become true legends, but Gerrard’s presence has been one of security and comfort to Liverpool fans. That is about to end. There will inevitably be plenty of airtime and paper space devoted to his career over the coming the weeks, so I will leave that to others. But who is there to replace him?

This brings us to the other player in the team occupying the column inches right now. Back in December, Gerrard saw what was about to be played out in public and urged Raheem Sterling to commit his future to the club. “I hope he signs a new contract because I think this club is perfect for him, certainly for the next few years,” Gerrard said. “The fans love him here. He can progress here and become a top, top player here so I hope the people around him give him the right advice because he should stay here.”

If a young Liverpool fan were to look through the current squad for his first hero, he might not see many. Sterling is perhaps the only player who can fulfil that role. Philippe Coutinho has just been named in the PFA Team of the Year but it is hard to see him staying at Anfield for the rest of his career.

Daniel Sturridge’s injuries will likely deprive him of any chance to lead Liverpool’s attack week in week out over a number of years. Adam Lallana and Jordan Henderson are very good players but are they in the class of the heroes that have gone before?

Sterling might just turn out to be. But times are different. Dalglish gave 13 years of his life to playing for the club, Barnes gave 10 and Gerrard has clocked up 17. Gerrard wasn’t suggesting Sterling should commit to those numbers but his point was that Liverpool could offer Sterling the chance to create a legacy.

Brendan Rodgers isn’t interested in heroes. He wants the best players available to him so he can go about challenging for the title again. Sterling’s agent definitely isn’t interested in heroes. He wants the best deal for his player, and consequently himself, regardless of where it is. And the player has a right to choose where he plays his football, even if he is going about it in the wrong way, allowing the media to feast on the uncertainty of his future.

Sterling is entitled to think he has more chance of winning medals elsewhere and, after the performance at Hull, of which he was a part, it would be hard to disagree with him. But the kid kicking the ball up and down his backyard needs a hero, and the Liverpool team that takes the pitch next season will be different from all the others in my memory, because it looks like it won’t have one.