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Liverpool Echo
Liverpool Echo
Sport
Elliot Thompson

Liverpool made lifelong fan's dreams come true but £2m transfer gamble didn't come off

If Liverpool are to land top target Jude Bellingham before he turns 20 on June 29, he will almost certainly break the club's transfer target, and he may well even become the most expensive teenager of all time.

Rewind back 28 years ago today and the Reds handed a debut to the player that had just broke the British transfer record for a teenager. The player in question? Mark Kennedy.

Snapped up in a £2m deal from Millwall, the Irishman was handed his Liverpool bow in a home clash with Leeds United, who won 1-0 thanks to Brian Deane. It was meant to herald the start of a career that would go from strength to strength at Anfield.

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The tricky winger came through the ranks at Millwall and impressed so much that he was given his senior debut at just 16. It was clear Kennedy had talent.

The Reds were fully aware of that talent and, after he showed the country just what he could do when he ran with the ball from the halfway line before smashing it home with a venomous strike to send Arsenal out of the FA Cup at Highbury, they made their move in March 1995.

Roy Evans, the Liverpool manager at the time, said: "Basically we're buying potential even though the fee is quite high.

"Mark can play wide left or up front. He's comfortable receiving the ball, he can go past people and he's a good passer.

"How soon Mark makes it to the first team is up to him. He has to settle in but as soon as he starts doing his stuff I won't be afraid to play him."

Millwall manager Mick McCarthy was devastated. He said: “It breaks my heart to seem him go but I wasn't prepared to stand in his way - even if I could. Offers like the one he had this week, come, perhaps, once in a lifetime - I wish him well in the challenge of handling the pressures of his new career at Anfield.”

"It's the proudest moment of my life," Kennedy said on his first day as a Red. "The first I heard of Liverpool's interest was when the gaffer, Mick McCarthy, rang me last night and told me to come round to his house because he had some good news for me.

"I've been a Liverpool supporter all my life."

Kennedy's debut followed soon after, coming off the bench against Leeds, and hitting the woodwork with one of his first touches, before he was handed his first start in the next game, a 1-0 win at Arsenal thanks to a last-gasp strike from Robbie Fowler, who turns 48 today.

Kennedy, then 18, played the whole game, and he would go on to start three more matches that season. The hype looked like it was justified but, after those opening months, it wore off.

The boyhood Red would go on to make just 21 appearances for the club he supported, failing to score, before he made a loan move to QPR and then a permanent move to Wimbledon, who paid £1.75m for his services.,

A switch to Manchester City followed before he spent five seasons with Wolves, where he won promotion to the Premier League in 2003, before he finished his ccareer, which saw him play 536 times and score 41 goals as well as winning 34 caps for the Republic of Ireland, at Crystal Palace, Cardiff City and Ipswich Town.

Kennedy, now 46, is currently head coach of Lincoln City. They are in the middle of League One, and he is not long off his one-year anniversary at the club, with a hope that this season will give him a solid base to take the squad further.

So, the same potential he showed as a player 28 years ago could be coming through in the form of a young manager.

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