Players Who Shook the Kop (2026 edition)

The Albert
81

We now have 95 of the top 100. Top five are pretty obvious.

It’s a good list tbh — the low placing of Beardsley is my main gripe. Also think Gomez is far too high and not sure why Jones has made it in but Agger and Skrtel didn’t.

2 Likes
82

I think it gets more difficult when it gets outside of living memory. I had a Main Stand season ticket for a couple of years in the 1980s that was next to an old woman who had been going to matches since 1913 (she was even featured in the programme one week)

She definitely had fond memories of certain players from the prewar era: Elisha Scott (“better than Grobbelaar”), Harry Chambers, Matt Busby (“absolute gentleman”), Gordon Hodgeson etc.

Looking back now, we don’t have those memories, virtually no footage, and mainly an often dry reporting from newspaper archives or fan centric biographies.

It’s often a case of picking out the club record holders and players who served during particularly successful periods. When you get to full backs and the like, it’s very difficult to pick them out purely from the stats.

3 Likes
83

Also sad Nunez didn’t make the cut tbh :frowning:

2 Likes
84

We now have our 100.

By nationality:

:england: 50

:scotland: 13

:ireland: 5

:brazil: 5

:spain: 4

:netherlands: 3

:wales: 2

:portugal::germany::united_kingdom::argentina::uruguay::hungary::egypt::uruguay::senegal::finland::norway::denmark::zimbabwe::belgium::australia::czechia::poland::south_africa::colombia: 1

2 Likes
85

I’d swap 1 and 2.

8 Likes
86

I would and I didn’t see one of them play.

1 Like
87

2 and 3 both move up a spot each to me.

1 Like
88

Kenny has to be #1. Accomplished more than Gerrard as both as a player and a coach. That, coupled with his dignified leadership after Hillsborough, gives him #1 on my list.

I’m fine with Gerrard at 2 and Rush at 3. I never watched Rush play live, but Liverpool recently compiled a video of every away goal we’ve ever scored in the Premier League era (the video is 4+ hours long), and it was evident even in those clips of how fucking good Ian Rush was. A brilliant world class striker. But Gerrard was world class all over the pitch, and played with worse teams, never left the club, and is a local lad, so he’ll get the edge.

5 Likes
89

I am old enough to actually get to see Dalglish, Rush, Hansen played. They were glorious on the pitch. I did not get to see much of LFC in the 90’s though.

2 Likes
90

Yeah no issue with Gerrard being second, assume they couldn’t ignore the fan vote on that.

91

Difficult to judge players in different teams a generation apart. I’ve no doubt that Kenny would have been our best player where he, and not Stevie playing in the 2000s just as Gerrard would have won the league many times if he’d played in the 70s and 80s with the teams we had back then.

92

yeah id have Virgil above Jockey, and Barnes…

Barnes was amazing, but there wasnt a longevity to his peak ( i know he spent a while here, but the peak) when you think of Barnes you think of 88-90, and then the rest.

when you think of Virgil, its just consistently been the best Centre back in the league… only the last few years has it been debatable, with losing the crown last year …probably…but with mitigating circumstances… still riduculous that at 35 years of age or whatever he is, he still played every minute of every PL game… mind boggling.

3 Likes
93

infact, id probably have Virgil up as high as 4th, and could be talked into third place above Rushie… hes been THAT good, and had THAT much impact.

we talk of recency bias, but theres also a nostalgia factor as well that players still playing dont have that glassy eyed nostalgic playing career thing about them.

if someone presented me with an arguement to put him above agerrard id even entertain that.

Dalglish at 1 for me, part of it being the managerial stint and everything around Hillsborough, which i suppose is strictly not to be taken into account.

94

Of course they could, if the fans were obviously wrong.

Remember the golden rule. We work as a team, and do it my way.

95

12 feels kind of disrepectful to me, but I struggle to find anyone above that I can justify swapping with him.

96

The problem for many players is that there isn’t that much archive footage of them. Even in the PL era, you mostly get to see highlights reels which tends to be goals and assists.

I heard Gary Lineker talking a while back about the greatest players he had seen and he made a point about Messi that it’s not just about the goals and the big flashy things. If you watch him, he will always do some little thing that almost goes unnoticed, but which on analysis is magical.

Dalglish was one of those players. It’s not always in the stats, but he would just make a pass or turn up in a position that seemed to involve ESP. And he would do that in every match.

Rush has the goal stats to back him up, but there was far more to his game than just the goals - he was a very intelligent forward. The nearest equivalent in the modern game would be someone like Lewandowski.

I suppose Gerrard is more of a latter day Billy Liddell, in that he stuck with the club when it was in a mess and he had offers to play elsewhere. There were definitely times when he was carrying the team.

3 Likes
97

In my book, these would be the top six:-
1: Kenny Dalglish
2: Steven Gerrard
3: Ian Rush
4: Mo Sallah
5: Virgil van Dijk
6: Graeme Souness

1 Like
98

Well end of day why even bother with a fan vote then,