Timing is so often everything in football, as it is in life.
There are numerous example of signings arriving at Liverpool at just the right moment for both player and club to take advantage of the direction of travel in a mutually beneficial way, most recently perhaps the transformative acquisitions of Virgil Van Dijk and Alisson Becker who in successive 2019 transfer windows helped take Jurgen Klopp’s Reds from nearly men to proven winners.
It can of course work the other way. Gerard Houllier’s decision to not to make Nicolas Anelka’s loan permanent and instead bring in El-Hadji Diouf proved a fatal turning point in the Frenchman’s reign while many of Liverpool’s summer 2014 arrivals found themselves caught up in and unable to reverse the trend of the psychological hangover lingering around L4 after that year’s exhilarating but ultimately devastating failed Premier League title bid.
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The beginning of football’s modern era thirty years ago coincided with a similarly unfortunate case of ‘wrong place, wrong time’ for a forward who arrived at Anfield with a blaze of publicity in a record-breaking transfer but was sold at a loss barely twelve months later before almost immediately coming back to haunt the club who’d let him go without ever really getting the best out of him.
Dean Saunders was following in his father’s footsteps when he finally got to pull on the famous red shirt, his dad Roy making close on 150 appearances in an 11-year spell at Anfield between 1948 and 1959 before leaving for Swansea City which is where his son Dean was born in 1964. The young Welsh forward was signed on as an apprentice by his hometown club after leaving school and, after making his debut in senior football for the Swans and a brief loan spell with South Wales rivals Cardiff City, joined Brighton & Hove Albion on a free transfer in the summer of 1985. His pace, energy and eye for goal was rewarded with a move to a top-flight club when Oxford United paid £60,000 in March 1987 in bid to preserve their First Division status which he was able to help secure with six goals in just twelve games.
It was a different story the following campaign as the U’s three-spell in the big time came to an end with relegation despite 12 goals from Saunders for the rock-bottom side and by October 1988 he was on the move again, being sold to Derby County for £1m in a transfer so controversial - both clubs were owned at the time by newspaper magnate Robert Maxwell - it caused Oxford boss and former Liverpool defender Mark Lawrenson to resign in protest.
Saunders initially thrived at the Baseball Ground, scoring 14 times in 30 matches to help the Rams finish fifth in the First Division in 1988/89 - a highest league finish since their 1975 title win - the Welshman first drawing the attention of some Liverpool supporters when his brace at Highbury during the run-in handed league leaders Arsenal a shock home defeat and gave Kenny Dalglish’s side a big boost in their championship challenge. The Rams would themselves be relegated two seasons later but Saunders’s achievement in scoring 17 league goals for a side which finished bottom of the First Division showed he was more than capable of operating at the higher level and he was arguably English football’s most in-demand player during the summer of 1991, his stock further rising by scoring the winner which gave Wales a first ever victory over Brazil.
Graeme Souness had taken over as Liverpool manager in the closing weeks of the previous campaign following Kenny Dalglish’s shock resignation two months before and, while the former Rangers boss was unable to prevent the Reds losing their league title crown to Arsenal, the Anfield board were prepared to back the new man with significant funds in his bid to take the club back to the top. A British record transfer fee of £2.9m was agreed with Derby for Saunders and, while that was matched by Merseyside rivals Everton, the Welshman’s family connection meant there was only ever one place he wanted to go.
“My dad Roy played for Liverpool in the 1950s with Billy Liddell so I was always keen on the club”, he recalled. “He had a bag of Liverpool cuttings and I remember being amazed by pictures of a Goodison derby with 78,000 in the crowd. So when Derby put me up for sale, there was no doubt who I’d sign for. I went to see Brian Clough at Nottingham Forest and Howard Kendall at Everton but Graeme Souness was very impressive. It was a place full of winners.”
Liverpool had already agreed a deal to bring Saunders’s Derby team-mate and England centre-half Mark Wright, who the previous summer had been named in the best XI at Italia 90 after his sterling performances at the World Cup, to Anfield for £2.2m as a potential long-term replacement for Alan Hansen who had retired from playing the week after Dalglish’s resignation and when Souness paid £1.5m to his old club Rangers to bring in winger Mark Walters, optimism abounded that the Scot’s new-look side had been sufficiently bolstered despite the sale of stalwarts Peter Beardsley to Everton and Gary Gillespie to Celtic.
Saunders and his new side got off to a winning start when newly-promoted Oldham Athletic were beaten 2-1 at Anfield on the opening day but it would be a difficult beginning for the Welshman whose price-tag was always going to put him under severe scrutiny. Initially partnered up front by 19-year-old Steve McManaman because of an injury to Ian Rush (who would only make 18 league appearances all season which prevented the much-anticipated partnership with his Welsh team-mate from ever really getting off the ground), the record signing thudded a late penalty against the crossbar as the Reds slumped to a 2-1 defeat at Manchester City in the second game then days later suffered a horror miss by blazing over an open goal from five yards in a goalless stalemate at Luton Town.
He would finally get off the mark in his fourth game when rifling home a superb second-half winner in front of the Kop with his left foot against Queens Park Rangers at Anfield and four days later seemed to have got his Liverpool career truly up and running as neighbours Everton crossed Stanley Park for the first Merseyside derby of the campaign. Much of the build-up had focused on the match up between Saunders and the man he had ostensibly been bought to replace, Peter Beardsley, who was returning to the ground he had frequently graced for the previous four years but it was the Welshman’s day. After David Burrows had slammed in an 48-second opener from 25 yards, the £2.9m man put Souness’s side two up after only quarter of an hour by chesting down Mark Walters’s left-wing cross and rifling home inside Neville Southall’s near post to help set up a comfortable 3-1 win which took the Reds up to second in the league table as the Kop regaled their former hero Beardsley with chants of ‘What a waste of talent’.
A win at Notts County the following weekend however would be Liverpool’s last in the league for nearly two months as the injury problems which would hamper progress for much of the campaign began to set in, long-term knocks suffered in the opening weeks by the likes of John Barnes, Mark Wright and Ronnie Whelan leading to an increased reliance on youngsters McManaman, Nick Tanner, Mike Marsh and Rob Jones who arrived for £300,000 from Crewe Alexandra in early October. With Liverpool now eligible to return to European competition following the lifting of the six-year Heysel ban, Souness’s selection dilemmas were not aided by a new ruling which only permitted four ‘foreigners’ - which included Welsh, Scottish and Irish players - to be named in match day squads but Saunders got the nod for the UEFA Cup opener against Finnish minnows Kuusysi Lahti and became the Liverpool player to score four times in continental competition as the Reds returned in style with a 6-1 victory.
Europe would be kind to Saunders as, despite being left out of both legs of the Reds’ second round win over French side Auxerre which saw a two-goal first-leg deficit recovered for the first time in LFC history, five goals in the third round triumph over Austrians’ Swarovski Tirol saw him break Roger Hunt’s club record for goals in a European season before defeat to Genoa of Italy in the quarter-finals. But his derby goal against Everton on the final day of August would be his last in the league until a week before Christmas as the litany of injuries through the squad and Souness’s inability to get the side performing consistently saw Liverpool mired in mid-table for much of the first half of the campaign. Saunders did manage two goals early League Cup ties against Stoke City and Port Vale but an embarrassing exit in early December to third tier Peterborough United - the Reds’ first to a club outside the top two divisions since the 1959 FA Cup humiliation by Worcester City - was indicative of the decline the club was falling into.
“I did feel there was a lot of pressure on me”, he admitted. “Not just from the fee. Going to such a successful club puts pressure on you regardless. I had to make huge changes to my game to fit in. At Derby they got balls to me quickly down the channels but Liverpool had a pure possession game. You had to learn link play, which was very new to me.
“I thought I’d be upfront with Ian Rush, Ray Houghton on one wing, John Barnes down the other and Jan Molby with Ronnie Whelan behind us. That’s what I hoped for but it wasn’t to be. The injury situation was unbelievable. Nine key players had Achilles operations that year and I played with nine different partners!”
Saunders’ three-and-a-half month goal drought in the league ended with a fine left-footed equaliser in a comeback win at Tottenham and ushered in an improved run of form for both player and team, the Welshman also notching against Manchester City, Sheffield United, Luton and Oldham as a near three-month unbeaten run in the league took the Reds back up to third behind pace-setters Manchester United and Leeds United. An impressive victory over reigning champions Arsenal at Anfield at the end of January briefly prompted hopes of a late blind-side run for the title but home defeat to Chelsea days later put such fanciful such talk into perspective and Souness’s men would only win once more in the league before late March by which time Liverpool were also out of Europe but still held hopes of silverware having reached the FA Cup semi-finals.
Saunders had scored home and away as the Reds struggled past Second Division Bristol Rovers in the fourth round after a replay and, following victories over Ipswich Town (again after a replay) and Aston Villa, the Reds were eyeing Wembley after being paired with Second Division Portsmouth in the last four. Another Peterborough-style upset loomed when Darren Anderton put Pompey in front six minutes into the second period of extra-time at Highbury but Ronnie Whelan’s 117th-minute scrambled equaliser after a John Barnes free-kick hit the post and rolled along the goal-line salvaged a replay, and Liverpool’s somewhat chaotic season was thrown into further turmoil even before the sides reconvened at Villa Park.
The day after the draw at Highbury it was announced that manager Graeme Souness required an immediate triple heart by-pass operation, with long-time Boot Room stalwart Ronnie Moran taking over as caretaker boss, much to the shock of Saunders and his team-mates.
“On our way back from London we pulled into a service station and Graeme told us he was going in for major heart surgery. It was a total shock. We were subdued after that but it made us more determined to win the Cup for him as he’d never won it as a player. The Portsmouth semi-finals were two very close games. The replay at Villa Park was exhausting. In extra time with five minutes to go, Rob Jones was shouting ‘Dean, I can’t move!’ He had terrible cramp so I finished off covering at right-back! It went to penalties, which are bad enough, but for a place in the Cup final… so tense. You can go to pieces and Pompey did, missing three out of their four kicks. Liverpool’s class and experience showed. I took mine at 2-0 up, their keeper went the wrong way and we were off to Wembley.”
The cup exploits meant the Reds’ league campaign tailed off tamely, with only two victories out of the last nine games resulting in a sixth placed finish, the club’s lowest since 1965, but the final one did cause much jubilation at Anfield. For much of the season, bitter rivals Manchester United had looked favourites to end their 25-year wait for a league championship but Alex Ferguson’s men collapsed in the final straight, suffering defeats to Nottingham Forest and already-relegated West Ham in the days before their visit to Liverpool on the penultimate weekend of the season, with Leeds’ win at Sheffield United earlier that day meaning the Red Devils now had to win at Anfield to take the title race to the final day. Ian Rush’s deftly-chipped 12th minute opener - his first goal against the Old Trafford side at the 18th time of asking - and Mark Walters’s late clincher secured a 2-0 victory which could have been greater with Saunders amongst others guilty of missing some gilt-edged chances, although the almost comic misfortune of one of them perhaps summed up his brief spell with the club, the Welshman holding his head in despair after shrewdly checking his run and pulling to the edge of the six-yard box to get on the end of a sweeping move involving Walters and John Barnes, only to see his goal-bound shot from the England winger’s cut-back beat Peter Schmeichel but hit Walters on the line and rebound behind for a goal kick.
A frail-looking Souness was back on the bench supported by the club doctor at Wembley as Ronnie Moran led Liverpool out against Sunderland and, after some nervy early moments against the Second Division side, the Scot (who caused outrage and calls for his resignation after selling the story of his heart operation to the S*n newspaper - still reviled and boycotted on Merseyside after its repugnant and damaging Hillsborough lies - which was published on their third anniversary of the disaster) saw his side conclude a difficult campaign with the Reds’ fifth FA Cup triumph after second half goals from Michael Thomas and Ian Rush.
Saunders was unlucky not to get on the scoresheet himself after rattling the crossbar with a second half header but played a part in Rush’s clinching goal and was delighted to get his hands on the first major winners’ medal of his career.. eventually.
“The final was the most nervous I’ve ever been in my life”, he admitted. “You really don’t want to mess up your part of the day with so many eyes on you. It’s the only chance you’re going to get! Luckily we played very well, I think the last Sunderland player to touch the ball was in the first half! I hit the bar with a header so it was a shame not to score but the result is the main thing. Although when we went up to collect the Cup we were given the losers medals accidentally because someone at Wembley had laid them out wrong!”
A tally of 23 goals in all competitions even if only ten of them were in the league was a reasonably respectable return given the various factors at play in Saunders’s first season at Anfield and a fine finish in the 4-3 Charity Shield defeat to Leeds at Wembley suggested those gruelling first twelve months on Merseyside may serve the Welshman well. He would later admit they did but Liverpool would not be the beneficiaries. With the ‘four foreigner’ rule still in operation for Europe, Souness bolstered his home contingent by signing Spurs midfielder Paul Stewart for £2.2m and selling Ray Houghton to Aston Villa for £2.5m before in the opening weeks of the season agreeing a separate deal with the Midlands club for Saunders, much to the forward’s surprise.
“Graeme called me in one day and told me he needed a centre-half (and eventually bought Danish defender, Torben Piechnik), and that he could raise the money by selling me to Aston Villa. I couldn't believe he was prepared to let me go, but he said he didn't think my partnership with Ian Rush had worked out, and Rushy wouldn't be the one going anywhere. That was it. I had mixed feelings about leaving Liverpool after only one full season. I thought I did quite well scoring 23 goals in 50-odd games and also winning an FA Cup medal but the moment Graeme indicated he was prepared to sell me, I knew there wasn’t much point staying.“
Attempts by Villa’s notorious chairman Doug Ellis to play hardball over the price ensured negotiations dragged on for a couple of weeks before a £2.5m fee was eventually agreed and gave Saunders one more eventful appearance in a red shirt, the Welshman scoring the 25th and final goal of his brief Anfield stay by heading the opener in a 2-1 home win over Chelsea before being involved in a full-blooded challenge with Paul Elliott which resulted in a free kick to Liverpool but caused a career-ending knee injury to the visitors’ former England defender who would later lose a High Court battle in which he sought more than £1m in damages against Saunders and Liverpool.
The capricious fates of the fixture list meant Saunders’ home debut for his new club would be against Liverpool less than a fortnight later. Although it was not uncommon at the time for selling clubs to put a condition into a deal that a recently-departed player would not feature against old club, the Reds did not insist on such a clause and it proved costly. After making his first appearance in a 1-1 draw away to champions Leeds United, the Welshman enjoyed a dream first appearance at Villa Park in claret and blue in a match remembered by many because of Ronnie Rosenthal’s infamous miss, first cancelling out Mark Walters’s opener with an instinctive finish in front of an infuriated away end just before half time and adding a second after the break in a 4-2 victory for Ron Atkinson’s side which ensured Match of the Day that evening would be pleasurable viewing for him and his family.
"I haven't been watching lately because I have been having a bit of a nightmare but I'll be tuning in again tonight”, he said after the game. “Obviously I had a big incentive to do well today and I'm thrilled to have scored. Both my goals went through the goalkeeper's legs. Two months ago I was hitting shots like that and they were coming back off the goalkeeper's legs. It just shows how things can change. I actually thought Liverpool were the better side in the first half but we really did well in the second half."
The defeat - Liverpool’s fourth already in their first Premier League campaign - left Souness’s side two points above the relegation zone in 17th after only two victories from their opening nine games and the manager would later admit that harrowing afternoon in Birmingham reduced him to tears as the scale of the task he faced began to truly dawn on him.
“I was totally depressed and it crossed my mind I might never be the strong forceful character that I had been before the heart operation. I headed up the M6 for Knutsford and I cried all the way home. I had tears streaming down my face on the 80-mile journey and goodness knows what other motorists would have made of that if they had recognised me. I was in bed by eight and seriously questioning whether I was strong enough, mentally and physically, for such a demanding job.”
Saunders would be the match-winner in the Anfield return as well the following January in a week Souness's reign lurched to a new low with defeat in their first defence of the FA Cup by third-tier Bolton Wanderers, and he would go on to prosper at Villa Park, striking up a productive partnership with Dwight Yorke as Villa challenged for the inaugural Premier League title but ultimately finished runners-up to Manchester United, the Welshman scoring twice against them at Wembley the following season as Villa ended United dreams of a domestic treble by winning the League Cup. He linked up with Souness again in 1995 when moving to Galatasaray in Turkey where the pair would again win the domestic cup before returning to England with Nottingham Forest and, after spells with Sheffield United and Benfica in Portugal, finished his playing days with Bradford City and retired at the age of 37 in 2001. The 75-cap Welsh international would go on to try his hand in management, initially with Wrexham, and after spells in charge of Doncaster Rovers, Wolverhampton Wanderers, Crawley Town and Chesterfield, now works in the football media.
His 14-month spell at Anfield may not have hit the heights expected given the record transfer outlay on him and to some Liverpudlians is still used to illustrate the period of decline the club were about to fall into after the unprecedented success of the 1970s and 80s but Saunders maintained it was an invaluable and educative chapter of a career which saw him play more than 600 games and finish as Wales’s fourth leading goalscorer of all time.
“I learned more about football in that one season at Anfield than I did the rest of my career. It was an amazing education. I’ll always be grateful for winning the FA Cup with Liverpool, but their expectations were so high you always had the sense that nothing short of winning the title was really good enough. There was a slightly depressing atmosphere around the place, as if everyone knew they weren't quite matching up. Fair enough, sixth isn’t good enough for Liverpool but if the squad had been fit, we’d have finished much higher. We were unlucky. Barnes, Rush, Glenn Hysen, Ronnie Whelan, Barry Venison, Mark Wright and Michael Thomas all had terrible setbacks. It was upsetting because Graeme loved the club and risked everything returning to Anfield. But my memories are brilliant and, considering the turmoil, it wasn’t a bad season. We won the FA Cup, returned to Europe and I got 23 goals, which I’d have taken if you’d offered me that at the start of the year.”
