There are occasions in football when a player finds one opponent in particular very much to his liking.
Liverpool’s all-time leading scorer Ian Rush reached double figures against eleven different teams during the course of the 346 goals he banged in for the Reds but his 25 strikes against Everton - the team he had supported as boy - which took him well clear of Toffees legend Dixie Dean’s total of Merseyside derby goals especially endeared him to Kopites, while more recently Luis Suarez seemed to have a personal vendetta against poor Norwich City, notching 12 times including three hat-tricks in only six appearances against the Norfolk side.
The aforementioned pair however were strikers meaning goals were their stock-in-trade which makes the achievement of midfielder Danny Murphy, who this weekend back in 2004 completed the unique feat of a hat-trick of winning goals against Manchester United at Old Trafford, even more impressive. The Chester-born boyhood Liverpudlian was, unbeknownst to him, coming to the end of his seven-year spell at Anfield which had seen him divide opinion at times among Reds’ fans and even get booed by some of them but, while he was forced to come to terms at the age of only 27 that the rest of his playing career would be away from the club he loved, his place in the LFC pantheon remains secure due to the nature and consequences of his exploits against Liverpool’s bitter rivals from down the East Lancs Road.
