“He is a treat to watch. Everything he does is so sweet and crisp. No pass is too difficult to try, he has spells when you think he's operating it by remote control.”
Liverpool have had some superlative passers of a ball over the years and the glowing tribute above could easily have been said of Kenny Dalglish, Xabi Alonso or modern-day midfield maestro Thiago Alcântara.
In fact, it was delivered by Anfield great Bob Paisley about a player he never directly managed but who is regarded by many who saw him in action as one of - if not, the - finest manipulators of a football to ever wear the red shirt, whose passing mastery was at the heart of one of the club’s most treasured successes.
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That triumph, in only his second Liverpool season, would prove to be the high point of his career, but his innate and enduring ability to make the ball almost talk enabled him - despite some physical shortcomings - to become the first foreign player to spend 10 years with an English club and become an adopted son of the city.
Jan Molby’s rare technical prowess should perhaps have been no surprise given where and with whom he gained his footballing apprenticeship. Having come through the ranks and captained hometown club Kolding in his native Denmark, the 18-year-old joined Ajax in Holland in 1982 and enjoyed two years in Amsterdam learning from the great Dutch legend Johan Cruyff, who was coming towards the end of his stellar career alongside up-and-coming stars Marco van Basten and Frank Rijkaard, winning the league and cup double in his first season.
The midfielder’s talents and potential suitability for English football had already been spotted three years earlier when Ipswich manager Bobby Robson tried to take him to Portman Road but at 17, Molby himself felt he was too young. By the summer of 1984 however, having established himself in Holland and with the Danish national team, the Dutch side alerted all of the top-flight clubs in England to the 21-year-old’s availability and a three-year deal with newly-promoted Sheffield Wednesday was agreed until Liverpool pounced.
Having won an unprecedented league, League Cup and European Cup treble in his first season as manager after taking over from Bob Paisley, Reds boss Joe Fagan had the unenviable task of having to replace captain and midfield general Graeme Souness, who had left Anfield to join Sampdoria in Italy. Offered a 10-day trial, Molby gave notice as to his capabilities in his first match against Home Farm in Ireland by taking the ball on his chest, kneeing the ball over a defender’s head and volleying into the net. Within days a £200,000 fee had been agreed to make him Liverpool’s first European import.
He was thrust straight into the side the following week at Norwich City as Fagan’s men began their title defence and received an eye-opening indication of the cultural differences he would have to adapt to before the match even kicked off.
"When we arrived at Carrow Road for my first game, we filed into the away dressing room,” Molby recalled to LFCHistory. “I asked Ronnie Moran: ‘What do we do now?’ ‘Just get changed, get yourself ready for the game, son’, he growled. ‘What time do we go out to warm up?’ I asked. ‘You don’t have time to warm up, save your energy.’ I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. At Ajax, we spent about 25 minutes warming up.
“As I started to get changed, a couple of the lads said the staff liked the players to have a massage before a game and I should ask Ronnie if he’d give me one. So that’s precisely what I did. ‘Er… Ronnie. Can I have a massage?’ ‘F*** off!’, he shouted. ‘You earn the f****** right to have a massage. Go out and play some games and then I might consider it’. I’d only been at the club for a couple of games and I started to wonder what what I’d let myself in for. Then I saw all the lads pissing themselves. That was my introduction to the Liverpool dressing room humour.
"I’ll never forget my first contribution to Liverpool’s cause on the pitch. It was in the first minute or so. I made a run down the right wing and Phil Neal put it over the top. Steve Bruce was making his debut for Norwich in the same game. I lifted the ball in and Steve arrived to score an own goal! That was my and Steve’s first touch of the game!"
It was the perfect opening to life in a red shirt but by the end of the afternoon Molby had already been given indications that things wouldn’t always be that easy after the Canaries had battled their way to a 3-3 draw and, although the Dane marked his Anfield debut two days later by helping his new side to a 3-0 win over West Ham United, his first campaign at Anfield proved to be one of toil. The victory over the Hammers would be Liverpool’s last in the league at home until late November with Fagan’s men even slipping into the relegation zone the previous month when Graeme Sharp’s volley gave Howard Kendall’s resurgent Everton their first win at Anfield since 1970.
Fagan initially kept faith with Molby as he tried to acclimatise to the hustle and bustle of the English game but brought in another midfielder, Kevin MacDonald from Leicester City, and having made 18 starts before the Reds’ Boxing Day home defeat to the Foxes (already their sixth of the campaign), the Dane made only two more in end of the season dead-rubbers as Liverpool finished trophy-less for the first time in a decade after finishing a distant second in the league to Everton, losing to Manchester United in the FA Cup semi-final and being beaten by Juventus in a European Cup final overshadowed by the Heysel tragedy.
After the adrenaline of Molby’s whirlwind introduction to English football, it was a sobering reality check and a source for concern with the World Cup in Mexico only a year away.
“My first season was a very difficult time all around for Liverpool,” he recalled. “In October we were second from bottom. If I had joined a more settled team it would have been easier. We had a lot of problems. Kenny Dalglish was out injured, Ian Rush had a cartilage operation. Souness had left. Phil Neal and Alan Kennedy were coming towards the back end of their careers. This wasn’t in the days of rotation and big squads. I played two years at Ajax and was involved with the Danish national side. I knew it was going to be difficult at Liverpool. No disrespect to people who were playing like Kevin MacDonald or John Wark, but I felt I was good enough to be in the team. But it was a typical Liverpool thing. They buy you and put you in the reserves until you’re ready. All of I could think of was that in ’85 Denmark qualified for the World Cup in 1986 and of course you wanted to be part of that. The Danish manager was very strict that if you didn’t play you wouldn’t be part of the national squad. Liverpool have always looked on their players as being adults and I think they understood my situation.”
The appointment of Kenny Dalglish as player-manager manager in the wake of Joe Fagan’s retirement would prove to be a major turning point with Scot being under no illusions over the Dane’s capacities having trained and played with him for only a season. “I couldn’t believe such a creative player was languishing in Liverpool reserves and I couldn’t wait to use him,” he admitted.
“Jan had unbelievable feet and I defied anybody to state categorically which was the stronger, because either foot could propel the ball at unbelievable speed towards goal.”
Molby was back in the heart of midfield for Dalglish’s first game in charge, a 2-0 win at home to Arsenal, and - with the Scot soon bringing in Steve McMahon from Aston Villa to replicate Souness’ ball-winning qualities - would go on to start 57 of the 63 matches in all competitions, the best of his career not only in terms of appearances but also influence, with the Dane’s versatility and footballing intelligence enabling him to be used as a sweeper or in a flat back four as well as in the middle of the park.
“I think you can owe that to my knowledge of the game and more importantly the fact that I was technically very good despite being quite big physically,” he said. “As a young boy I used to play as a sweeper but when Ajax bought me they converted me into a midfielder. In Amsterdam, I played in a variety of positions and that surely enhanced my football knowledge. But when I came to Liverpool, the best thing was that they were not concerned about having to play me in different positions. The first time I had to play as centre-half in a flat back four I looked at the manager and told him: ‘Really me?’ And he said: ‘Not a problem’. That confidence helped me to settle down and just focus on doing the job I was asked to do without any pressure. Kenny didn’t play me sweeper because he thought I had great defensive qualities, he played me there to start play from the back and define the attacking play so it wasn’t too bad.”
The Reds made a solid start under their new unconventional management scheme which had seen Bob Paisley return as an advisor to Dalglish, laying down an early marker of their determination to bring back the league championship trophy from its temporary home across Stanley Park with an eventful 3-2 win at Goodison Park in September and losing only two of the opening 20 First Division fixtures. Manchester United were the early-season pace-setters, however, winning their first 10 matches to open up a nine-point lead and prompting newspaper talk of a Red Devils takeover after the recent Mersey dominance. Dalglish’s men were the first to take points off Ron Atkinson’s side with a 1-1 draw at Old Trafford in October and when the sides were paired together at Anfield the following month in the fourth round of the League Cup, it ultimately turned out to be a pivotal moment in the season and arguably Molby’s career.
Trailing to Paul McGrath’s early strike, two goals in as many minutes from the Dane shortly before the hour mark sent the Reds through to a quarter-final tie against Ipswich Town, the second of them being a typically nerveless penalty, but it was his first sensational equalising goal which won him a place in Anfield mythology. A dispute between the Football League and broadcasters meant there was no football shown on English television screens until the new year so, for over a quarter of century, only the 41,291 spectators lucky enough to be in the ground that night saw Molby pick the ball up 10 yards inside in his own half and motor past a number of despairing challenges before exploding a ferocious shot from the edge of the penalty area to send the Kop wild with delight.
"I took the ball off Norman Whiteside inside our own half,” he remembered. “I went on a run past three or four United players and then shot with my right foot from about 20 yards. As soon as I struck the ball I thought, 'that’s in'. Gary Bailey, the United 'keeper, said to me afterwards: ‘If I’d got my hand in the way of the ball, I reckon it would’ve taken it off’. I laughed but secretly thought, ‘yeah, too bloody right mate’, and he still insists it was the hardest shot he had ever faced. When the ball went into the net it was like an explosion in the ground. The whole place erupted. That was revealing enough but the next 24 hours told me much more. The next day, my goal was the front page story on a Danish national newspaper and other papers and television companies sent people over just to find out more about it.”
It later transpired, however, there was video footage of Molby’s sumptuous strike. Visiting manager Ron Atkinson had taken to having United’s games recorded from the stands so they could be analysed afterwards and a very small number of recordings found their way into the hands of a fortunate few, one of whom was Liverpool fan and journalist Tony Evans.
“The goal became the stuff of legend," said Evans. Molby has a video of it but has been unforthcoming in producing it. I had a copy of it - acquired from a mole inside Old Trafford but lent it to a fellow drunk in 1989 and never saw it again. The Holy Grail of Liverpool goals and I was dumb enough to lose it. I could destroy the myth and say that Molby never levelled Norman Whiteside with a brilliantly brutal but fair tackle. That he never danced around three defenders - they backed away like Brazilians with Barnes. That the shot was only half as hard as a Jimmy Case special. But I won't. It was better than you even imagine it. In fact, as Shankly might have said, it was the greatest event in the history of time.”
Molby did eventually release the video to LFC TV in 2009, having first arranged for a special screening of it at a packed marketing suite at Anfield with all the proceeds going to a local charity, saying: “I know there are an awful lot of people who were at the match who have said: ‘Jan, you could do us a favour and not release that goal because we have our own memories and we’re quite happy with those’. But of course for all those that were there, there are probably 100,000 more who have never seen the goal.”
The Dane was on target from the penalty spot again three days later against Chelsea with an 86th-minute strike which looked set to put Dalglish’s men top of the First Division for the first time all season, but a late Pat Nevin equaliser hinted at the two winless spells which would follow either side of new year and again in February when Everton gained revenge from the Reds' win at Goodison five months earlier with a 2-0 triumph at Anfield in a game which had seen Molby tried out in another new role, this time just behind lone striker Ian Rush (“The poor Dane must be starting to suffer an identity crisis,” wrote the Guardian. “One week a sweeper, the next midfield, the next pseudo-striker”) in an experiment which only lasted 45 minutes.
With the Reds now trailing their Merseyside neighbours who had begun to hit form again after their own early-season woes to now lead Dalglish’s men by eight points, hopes of winning back the title were hanging by the slenderest of threads especially when falling behind early in their next match, a televised Sunday afternoon visit to Tottenham Hotspur. Molby settled the ship, however, midway through the second half with a goal he later described as arguably the most important Liverpool scored all season, rifling home a low drive from the edge of the penalty area after a corner was only half-cleared, and Ian Rush poached a last-minute winner to breathe new hope into the Reds’ campaign.
Fortunes continued to see-saw with Dalglish’s men three days later being unable to recover a first leg deficit in the League Cup semi-finals at home to Queens Park Rangers, Molby missing a penalty in a 2-2 draw during which both the visitors’ efforts were own goals by Liverpool players, and less than a fortnight later the Dane’s mettle was tested as the Reds’ FA Cup dreams lay in the balance at Watford. After a goalless quarter-final draw at Anfield, a John Barnes free kick had put the Hornets on course for a last-four spot until with, just four minutes remaining, Ian Rush was brought down by goalkeeper Tony Coton to hand Dalglish’s men a lifeline from 12 yards. Molby had missed two out of his last four penalties having also failed from the spot against Sheffield Wednesday in a 2-2 draw at Anfield on New Year’s Day but kept his nerve to force extra-time with Rush’s 108th minute winner setting up a semi-final date with Southampton at White Hart Lane to keep alive the prospect of an all-Merseyside final against Everton after the draw kept the local rivals apart.
Both would require extra-time but duly obliged to book their places at Wembley in May to add an extra edge to the title race which, with early season leaders Manchester United having fallen way off the pace, was now a head-to-head battle between the Merseyside giants. Aside from a goalless draw at Sheffield Wednesday, Dalglish’s men had won every match since losing the Anfield derby in February, but while the Toffees had dropped some points to narrow their lead, they still had command of the title race until the final week when a shock defeat at relegation-threatened Oxford United at the same time the Reds were winning at Leicester meant a Liverpool win at Chelsea on the final Saturday of the league campaign would confirm the championship trophy would be crossing Stanley Park again.
Dalglish’s 23rd-minute volley fittingly ensured it was the player-manager himself who scored the goal which clinched the title but, as thoughts began to turn to Wembley and the ‘Double’ which at the time had been achieved only twice that century and four times ever, Molby’s were tinged with anxiety having missed the Stamford Bridge league decider with a stomach upset.
“It was always a dream of mine to play in an FA Cup final,” he said. “We used to watch it every year in Denmark and I wanted to be the first Dane to play in one but didn’t manage that as Jesper Olsen got there 12months before. In those days you very rarely changed a winning team which was the thought I woke up with on the morning of the final against Everton but luckily for me Gary Gillespie was taken ill and Mark Lawrenson who had played midfield against Chelsea was moved back into the back four and I played. The club hadn’t won the Cup for 12 years and when you look at the players there - Rush and Whelan and Hansen and Dalglish and so on - I don’t think any of them had played in an FA Cup final before so you could straight away sense this was a little bit special. Back then the FA Cup final was bigger than the European Cup final in my view.”
Having seen the league title slip through their fingers, Howard Kendall’s Toffees were highly motivated in their third successive final and made the better start at Wembley, taking the lead just before the half-hour mark through double Footballer of the Year Gary Lineker with the 40th goal of his first and only season at Goodison Park and threatened to put the game beyond Liverpool early in the second half as an out-of-sorts Reds side searched for a foothold. Molby helped provide it, producing a inch-perfect through ball following a mistake from Gary Stevens for Ian Rush to equalise on 57 minutes before six minutes afterwards crossing with his left foot for Craig Johnston to put Liverpool in front and five minutes from time displaying his remarkable vision with a superb pass for Ronnie Whelan which opened up the sweeping move that concluded with Rush blasting home his second goal and the decisive third to secure what was only the club’s third ever FA Cup success and the hallowed Double.
Molby was duly named man of the match afterwards to complete a triumphant end to a magnificent season for the Dane which saw him notch 21 goals in all competitions and for Liverpool after a campaign which had begun with so much uncertainty and scrutiny after the events of twelve months before
“If you look back through the history of all the great Liverpool sides, we were the only ones ever to win the Double,” he said as he looked back proudly. “That’s something really special that will always stay with me. It was against the odds too because there’s been a lot of new faces to the squad that season. But when you look at our run-in, 11 wins and a draw in the last 12 games of the season, culminating in an FA Cup final win, that’s pretty phenomenal. We just never thought we could be beaten. Call it a never-say-die attitude but there was a camaraderie between the players the likes of which I’ve never experienced anywhere else in my career.”
It sent the Dane off to Mexico in good heart for his country’s first ever appearance in the World Cup finals and, although eliminated by Spain in the last 16, their stylish attacking play while winning all three group matches won many admirers, Molby featuring in all four games with his one start being a 2-0 victory over eventual finalists West Germany. Now firmly established as a key figure in Dalglish’s Liverpool side, Molby returned to Merseyside and enjoyed another consistent campaign scoring 12 times in 47 appearances and earning a unique place in the history books by scoring a hat-trick of penalties in a League Cup tie against Coventry City - which happened to be the first Reds game future Reds legend Steven Gerrard attended as a fan - following it up with another spot-kick against the Sky Blues when the sides met at Anfield in the league the following weekend. The Dane would go on to be regarded as one of the finest penalty takers Liverpool ever had, scoring 42 of the 45 he took during his 12 years at the club thanks to his seemingly nerveless technique.
He said: "I guess it was just the way it was in my make-up that I always felt comfortable and confident taking penalties. If the goalkeeper didn’t move before I struck my shot I would always put it low to his right but if he moved I would go the other way. I guess that’s not something you can teach somebody it’s just something in their make-up."
Molby’s unique treble helped Liverpool reach Wembley again but defeat to Arsenal sparked a late season collapse which also saw them blow a nine-point lead at the top of the First Division in March to finish second to Everton again and, with star striker Rush leaving to join Juventus in Italy for £3.2m, Dalglish revamped his attacking line-up by bringing in British record signing Peter Beardsley for £1.9m from Newcastle United, Watford winger John Barnes for £900,000 and Oxford United striker John Aldridge for £800,000 with midfielder Ray Houghton soon following the same path as his compatriot from the Manor Ground to Anfield.
The new influx gelled perfectly with the old guard for one of Liverpool’s most dominant ever championship campaigns with the Reds wrapping up the club’s 17th league title with five games to spare after a campaign filled with such scintillating football they were compared to Brazil and they only missed out on another Double after shock defeat to Wimbledon in the FA Cup final to Wembley. It was a time to forget for Molby, however, as a broken leg in pre-season saw him lose his place in the side and ultimately, for a short period, his liberty when he was jailed for reckless driving. Having already picked up four driving convictions from Merseyside police in three and a half years, the Dane had been acting as a chauffeur for friends on a night out and, having had a couple of pints himself, panicked when passing a couple of police cars who began to pursue him and floored his BMW M3 all the way home to Chester. Although he pleaded guilty to reckless driving after being apprehended, he was sentenced to 90 days in prison in the autumn of 1988, of which he served 45, and described it in his autobiography 'Jan the Man' as the worst experience of his life.
“Looking back I don’t know how I survived,” he admitted. “I suppose there was no option so I simply had to get on with it. Funnily enough it was a Manchester United fan who got me through it. He was one of the prison officers and he’d take me to the gym in his own time so I could concentrate on fitness work. I’ll never forget that - not because it was a United fan but the fact that it was an act of genuine kindness from one human being to another. I didn't sleep for the first two days. I was scared. My cellmate was a strange fella. He didn't know who I was, which worried me. If he had been a football fan I would have felt safe. He never said a word and he never slept, so I never slept. As time went by, I was starting to worry more and more about the prospect of facing Liverpool Football Club, and the world in general. Nobody from the club came to see me when I was locked up. I think Kenny might have wanted to but didn’t feel it was the right thing to do. It would probably have turned into a media circus had he arrived at prison. I was disappointed that nobody from Liverpool wrote to me, especially as I had received some personal good-luck messages from the Danish squad.
“There were so many media people waiting outside when I was released I had to leave the prison in secret. Later that day my solicitor drove me to Anfield and the players were out training, so I did some work around the pitch. After a while, they came back from Melwood to find me sitting in the dressing room waiting for them. At first, they didn’t know how to handle my return – they didn’t know what to expect. Nobody asked what prison had been like. I remember Ray Houghton’s reaction. I was never that close to him but he was absolutely made up to see me. After a few moments Kenny Dalglish said it was time to go and we drove back to his house for lunch. Kenny put most of my fears to rest by telling me what I desperately wanted to hear, that he wanted to keep me, but we would have to face the board the next day. When we did, the chairman John Smith had a go at me by asking what I was going to do about my drink problem. Kenny stepped in to correct the chairman. ‘Jan doesn’t have a drink problem,’ he explained. ‘If he did have one, he wouldn’t have been at this club as a player. If we decide to sack Jan or sell him we need three men to replace him’. My hearing lasted 20 minutes, but it was another three hours before I knew my fate. ‘We’ve decided to keep you on as a Liverpool player’, the chairman said, shaking my hand. ‘Nice to see you back’. A huge wave of relief washed over me. Liverpool had prepared a press statement for me to read and drawn up a contract which meant I couldn’t discuss the whole incident in public while I was with the club.”
The Dane made his return to action as a substitute in Liverpool’s New Year’s Day defeat away at Manchester United and was back in the starting line up two days later when Aston Villa were beaten at Anfield as Dalglish’s men tried to rebuild their campaign after a poor first half of the season saw them way off the title pace being set by George Graham’s Arsenal. An injury picked up against Charlton Athletic in March ruled him out of the rest of the campaign but he was at Hillsborough that April to support his team-mates in the FA Cup semi-final against Nottingham Forest only to watch on in horror from the stands as 97 Liverpool supporters were unlawfully killed in Europe’s worst ever sporting disaster, playing his part in the aftermath as the devastated squad tried to support the bereaved and the injured.
He said: “I was facing towards the Leppings Lane End and I noticed that all the fans seemed to be in the middle section and the sides were empty. I remember thinking that with all that room I could have had some more tickets because it didn't look like a sell out. What I didn't know was there were still thousands of fans still outside trying to get in. I first realised something was wrong when people started climbing over the fence and running up to us saying people were getting crushed. Then the advertising hoardings came down.
“We were young footballers, not trained counsellors, we thought 'how are we going to help?' It was difficult. We were just there in case we were needed. It was hard to know what to say. You would be sitting down with a family of seven or eight who had just lost their son, daughter, husband or father and you have got to find something to talk about. The one thing we did have was football. Even in times like that people want to talk about it and that did help a lot. The basic message we got was to go and win the FA Cup for the people who had died. There was a fantastic spirit in the city at the time and I don't know whether you would have had that anywhere else.”
Although free from injury again for the start of the 1989/90 campaign, it would be late November before Molby would start a league match and although he played enough games to qualify for another league championship medal the following May, the intermittent nature of his appearances meant he was never able to build up the fitness and momentum his burly frame - which had soon seen him handed the nickname 'Rambo' - needed.
“That was always my problem,” he admitted. “When I got a good run of games like in ’85-’86, I played nearly every game. I missed a couple through illness but no injuries. It wasn’t a problem, but became one the moment I didn’t play and had a couple of weeks break. The way they used to do things at Liverpool they put you straight back into the first team when you had recovered. The board never complained I wasn’t fit. I really became frustrated with all the injuries I suffered and that’s when my weight would fluctuate. It took Liverpool ages to comply a full-time physio so if an injury needed five or six weeks’ rest you’d just be left to your own devices. That’s when the weight really went on. I’d eat pretty anything and everything through sheer boredom.”
The Dane looked set to leave Merseyside in the autumn of 1990 when a deal to take him to Barcelona, now managed by his old Ajax team-mate Johan Cruyff, was lined up and a penalty in a 4-0 Anfield win against Luton Town seemed to be his parting gift.
“Everything had been agreed and I fancied the move,” he recalled. “I actually thought I’d played my last game for Liverpool against Luton when I scored the penalty. But 48 hours later I got a phone call to say the deal had collapsed because Liverpool wouldn’t agree to the method of payment Barcelona wanted for the £1.6m fee. It was a blow at the time because I was keen for a new challenge and of course I knew Cruyff. But it wasn’t to be and I consoled myself by thinking. ‘well I’m still at a great club’. When I got back to Anfield Kenny Dalglish said he was glad to see me back and that was enough for me.”
Three months later, however, Dalglish had resigned after the strain of leading the club through Hillsborough and its aftermath coupled with the unending pressure and expectation of keeping Liverpool at the top started to affect his health. Fellow Scot Graeme Souness eventually took over and Molby featured regularly in the former Rangers boss’ first full campaign at the helm, making 40 appearances (the third highest of his Anfield career) and helping the club to another FA Cup triumph. The Reds were also back in Europe after the ban following Heysel was lifted after six years, the Dane scoring the crucial opener from the penalty spot and setting up the winner for Mark Walters as Liverpool memorably overcame a two-goal first-leg deficit for the first time in their history against French side Auxerre en route to the quarter-finals before later that month scoring a stunning 40-yard goal from near the touchline against Norwich which seemed to defy physics.
Liverpool’s league placing of sixth that season however was their lowest since 1963 and indicative of the serious decline the club was spiralling into which would mean that 1990 title triumph would be the last for another three decades.
“As a club, we didn’t see what was coming,” Molby suggested. “Yes, you could look at the squad which won the league in 1990 and say it needed a couple of additions, but 30 years with no title?! Nobody thought that. Each year, layers were being taken off. We were losing games we had to win, and that hadn’t happened for a long time. Even when we lost the league to Arsenal in the last minute in ‘89, Hillsborough was never talked about as a reason. It's only later when people started to wonder what kind of impact it had. History told us that if we didn’t win the league, we’d win it the next year. We didn’t think it was over for us when Arsenal won the league in ‘91. But when recruitment isn’t quite what it used to be, it goes on a bit longer and you start thinking ‘Hang on, we need a rebuild here.' And when was the last time Liverpool, the great Liverpool, had needed a rebuild?”
Despite new regulations over overseas players’ availability for Europe, Molby was one of the few senior players who survived Souness’ attempts to rebuild the squad which saw the likes of Ray Houghton, Peter Beardsley, Steve McMahon and Steve Staunton leave the club and he would ultimately outstay the managerial tenure of the man he had been ostensibly bought to replace with Souness being sacked just shy of a decade short of his departure as a player back in January 1994 and replaced by Boot Room stalwart Roy Evans.
“The biggest thing wasn’t the players he let go, it was the players he bought,” Molby claimed. “It was the players we got that killed us in the end. From one day to the next almost, you could see the decline. At Melwood we had a very simple way of training, but it was always done to a level. All of a sudden, you look around and think, ‘how can we play the way Liverpool want to play on a Saturday, if this is the level we are producing in training? Everything changed. We bought a left-back called Julian Dicks. A left-back who served balls into the front man. We never played like that. We played through the middle and we created overloads. We never played with two strikers, we played with one up front and one off the front – Kenny or Beardsley – but all those things changed overnight. Football was changing, and as a football club we were probably always a little slow to follow suit. We were still holding onto what had been successful in the 70s and 80s, while football around us was accelerating into a new era. Once that train left, we weren’t on it. And it took forever for us to catch up.”
With Molby now 31, he was never likely to be a key element as the new manager looked to bring in new blood to complement youngsters like Robbie Fowler, Steve McManaman, Rob Jones and Jamie Redknapp who had provided some rays of light to shine through an otherwise dark Anfield period. Molby did score the first goal of Evans’ first full season in charge, inevitably a penalty in a 6-1 opening day victory at Crystal Palace in August 1994, and grabbed his 61st goal for the Reds (again from the spot) against Coventry the following March in his 292nd and final game for the club. After loan spells with Barnsley and Norwich, he joined Swansea City as player-manager in February 1996 and took them to the Division Three play-off final in his only full campaign in charge before being sacked the following October. Two years later he returned to management with Conference side Kidderminster Harriers who he led into the Football League for the first time in their history and he had a spell in charge of Hull City and a brief return to Kidderminster before embarking on a career in the football media.
While there can no doubt, Molby’s Liverpool career was somewhat lop-sided - he made only 42 appearances across his final four Anfield seasons as opposed to 119 in his first three - he remains fondly thought of by many who watched him spraying the ball around effortlessly in a red shirt and who appreciated his whole-hearted attitude to life on Merseyside which saw the Dane speaking English with a distinctively Scouse twang only a few months after arriving in the city, where he still lives today, and won an ‘adopted Scouser’ honour from in 2009.
“The fact I speak with a Scouse accent is all down to Sammy Lee," he admitted. "I used to get changed next to him and everything he said I’d pick up so I blame him. From where I come from in Denmark there is no accent so I think it was very easy to affect me with one and the Liverpool accent is so strong. The first time I was interviewed on national TV, I'd only been in the country three months and every other word was pure Scouse. I've been on holiday abroad and people have asked where I'm from and I've had to get out my passport to prove I'm from Denmark.
“Liverpool have become a very special club for me. I think that many clubs that you can play for don’t necessary come part of your life. You play for them and then move on. But Liverpool was different as you become part of the city and culture of the club. I played for Liverpool for 12 seasons and have lived in the city ever since. Sometimes you go somewhere and say that I was meant to be there and that is what happened to me at Liverpool and can’t see myself somewhere else. Probably you can say that I have become a Liverpudlian now.”
