Tl/dr:
Yes, but no, but yes, but what? Something Hendo. Was he any good? Maybe, maybe not.
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The vendetta is ducking stupid but to a degree I respect the level of saltiness to keep coming back to the idea years after he left to keep saying he was shit.
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We can throw to the discussion Carraās comment the other day that he couldāve comfortably remained at the club and be in Endoās current role. To get a proper send off at the end.
Not that I think Hendo wouldāve accepted such a role, so itās probably better that we parted ways. We got very good money for him and Fabinho, a little bit unexpected. If we had known at the time, I wonder if our targets wouldāve been a bit different, like getting involved for Riceās signature at the time.
Football cannot be romantic all the time, send offs depend on many things, you have last years of your career to make decisions.
Thereās no reason for him not to be remembered as a club legend and Iām sure heāll be back at Anfield post his playing career and still get nice receptions like he deserves.
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Hendo was excellent for us. A leader and a smashing player. He was a good captain and he won the Prem with us.
He was more than good enough in comparison to his peers. He suffers slightly due to coming after Stevie, and then also the way his time ended, with a poor choice to go to Saudi Arabia given his vocal support for the lgbt community.
But leaving those things aside, and just looking at what he brought on the pitch, he was very good indeed.
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Every player gets this thrown at them, itās like Robbo or Bradley they go from amazing to the glue factory most weeks.
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Hendo is the player who has lifted the most amount of trophies as captain for us isnāt he?
Something like that. He must have done something right.
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He is the only player I have seen that could mark 3 opponents at the same time with his positioning then time his pressure on the ball to force the opponent with the ball to run across the pitch 3 times before Gini could get there and win the ball. This Game after game. He won us soo much time to organise which is soo valuable and we havenāt had since.
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Itās absolutely crazy revisionism to call Jordan Henderson limited or lucky.
He is the embodiment of the idea of squeezing every last drop of talent out of yourself, and while there were players more naturally gifted than him, few could say they worked harder or were more committed to giving their absolute best.
Liverpool are going through a shit run at the minute, and itās times like this Iād give anything to have Jordan Henderson around, setting the standards that everyone should consider the bare minimum.
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Iām sure many remember the days of CHAD.
Not sure who expected to see him still at the club years later, lifting trophies. He gave plenty.
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He was not elegant and his talent gets unfairly knocked down for that as if technique and aesthetics are the only dimension on which you can judge footballing talent. In reality football is played in the head as much as it is with the legs and he was absolutely excellent in that department. The trope of him succeeding through grit and hard work really downplays that he read the game excellently and the faster the pace of the game was the more he stood out in that department.
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If someone calls Hendo limited, Iāve no issues with that. All players have their limits, of different levels. Even if itās not something clearly seen or for all people to agree on. I think we know what people mean when they say that about Hendo.
But to call him luckyā¦ nah. He had a bit of luck when his Liverpool career was on the line when he almost got traded for Dempsey, thatās true. I believe he wouldāve battled his way to another important team from Fulham.
All the rest was down to merit, he did really well.
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Oddly his move did leave a bad taste in my mouth but with time the moments he brought have put that into the shade. I will always appreciate what he gave us.
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Szobozlai has Hendersonās engine but better footwork
His departure aside, he captained and organized our side to our best run of trophies in generations. A little respect is due here, he was the glue for years.
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I always thought he had that cross perfected when it was laid backto him in a right half position and he always delivered, forwards loved that because they knew it was always coming in and could time their runs.
Something we miss now.
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Charlie Adams, Stewart Downing and Andy Carroll. Jordan doesnāt deserve to be placed alongside that lot - really it should be CAD.
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Agreed. If he had a bit more luck heād have won 4 PL titles and 2/3 CL medals. If he hadnāt been suspended for the Chelsea and Palace games in 2014 weād likely have won that title and you donāt finish on 97/98 points and not win the PL if you are āluckyā.
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As far as technical ability goes for a midfielder he was fairly limited, but as a captain and leader of men and someone who set the standards of hard work and determination you wouldnāt find many better. He had the odd Hollywood pass in his locker too but it took me a while to realise that the reason he wasnāt playing them was because thatās not what Klopp wanted from his midfielders. He was basically a mini Klopp on the pitch and for all the stars we had the team suffered whenever he was unavailable which speaks volumes. Thereās no point having a team full of stars without someone like Hendo to keep them all in line.
I do feel people miss the point about players like Hendo. Clearly he wasnāt Zidane or Gerrard, we all watched him play for years and understand his limitations. In any organisation (talking away from football for a second) you need people with a range of different skills to make the thing work. If you run a company that produces products letās say - You might need people who are good with IT skills to keep things online, people with a more mechanical mindset so when shit breaks they can get it up and running quickly, you need people who can design and innovate, you need people who are happy stood in a warehouse putting stuff in boxes 9 hours a day to ship out to customers. If everyone in the organisation was a genius IT geek then the business is gonna fail pretty quickly.
Hendo was selected to be captain after the great man left and was played regularly in our midfield during the most successful period for our club in the last 35 years. He regularly covered the full back positions when they were bombing on and did lots of dirty work for the team, enabling those better footballers around him to fuck off towards the other goal when they could and win matches for us knowing that him/Milner etc had them covered. I agree he wasnāt/isnāt a brilliant footballer, nobody claims he is - but I doubt we would have won the trophies we did without him (and others too for various reasons - Iām not claiming heās the sole reason). Many players have said what a great leader he was on and off the field - something that we as fans probably donāt appreciate. The positive winning culture that Jurgen cultivated at this club was promoted and probably at times enforced by Hendo (and others). He will always have my respect and will go down in history as one of the clubs most successful captains, despite not being a world class player like some captains who came before.
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You have described the situation perfectly.
As a great manager once said, āA football team is like a piano. You need eight men to carry it and three who can play the damn thing.ā
Jordan was one of those guys that helped to carry the damn thing, letting those more gifted to get a tune out of it.
He wasnāt highly regarded by some when he first arrived, but he showed immense character to achieve what he did for us.