For a club with as successful and trophy-laden a history as Liverpool, goalscorers inevitably feature highly when the best-loved players to have pulled on the famous red shirt are considered.
Billy Liddell, Roger Hunt, Ian St John, Kevin Keegan, John Toshack, Kenny Dalglish, Ian Rush, Robbie Fowler, Michael Owen, Fernando Torres, Luis Suarez, Mohamed Salah... the names trip off the tongue and their achievements speak for themselves, having won the hearts of generations of Kopites as well as the admiration of fans from much further afield too.
Yet in terms of pure goalscoring, few of the above can match the feats of one sharp-shooter who plied his trade at Anfield for a regrettably brief period but played a key role in one of Liverpool's greatest ever teams and finished his long career having scored more goals in post-war English league football than anyone else.
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What’s more, he did it having (eventually) graduated from Anfield’s Boys Pen to the Kop and then to the hallowed turf of the pitch ensuring every strike meant that little bit more not just to him but to many of the supporters watching who he had once stood alongside.
John Aldridge’s unerring ability to find the back of the net was perhaps written in the stars given his mother was told by a fortune teller when he was a baby that he would be gifted with his feet and, growing up as a Liverpool-mad youngster in Garston, he was soon following in the footsteps of his boyhood idol ’Sir’ Roger Hunt by scoring prolifically in schools football.
“From an early age I knew I was a goalscorer but I wasn’t sure how far that would take me in the game”, he admitted in his book ‘Alright Aldo - Sound as a Pound’.
“All top strikers say goalscoring comes naturally and for me it was the same. I was just able to find space in the box and had the knack of putting the ball in the net. It was never something I really had to think about, I was just born with it.
“I used to score five and six goals in games for the school, eight was the most I managed in one match. Headers always gave me lots of satisfaction but I didn’t care how I did it, as long as the ball went in. A tap-in was just as good as a spectacular volley.”
By the time he was 14, Aldridge’s exploits had caught the eye of Garston gasman and part-time Liverpool scout John Bennison and, after being invited for trials, he found himself training with the club twice a week only to be left devastated when Boot Room sage and Youth Development Tom Saunders told him they were letting him go.
He got a second crack at the YTS contract every Liverpool-mad youngster on Merseyside dreamed of a year later when his dad pestered the club into taking another look at him and, after displaying his goalscoring talent over a six week period, had reason for optimism when being told by Saunders after scoring for the ‘B’ team, “Great goal John. We’ll definitely be giving you a ring.”
The call from Liverpool never came though, at least not for another 14 years, but Aldridge’s heartbreak at being snubbed by the club he loved couldn’t thwart his passion for his team and he threw himself into following the Reds home and away as a fan.
“It was exciting times”, he recalled to the ECHO. “I was lucky in that at the top of the road the Woodcutters pub used to take a bus straight to Anfield and I didn’t have to mess around with two buses to get there so I was really fortunate in being able to use that to get to all the home games and I travelled to the aways as well. Back then Liverpool and Everton were right up there with the best teams in the country and it was brilliant, having banter with your mates about who was top dog. It was a great area to grow up in, it was tough under the bridge in Garston but the kind of place that kept you grounded, full of good people with proper working class values.
“I was aggressive. I come from a part of Liverpool that's very tough. You have to fight your corner to survive and that helped me in football. I wouldn't let anyone overpower me. I was the boss. I used my elbows and a kick in the back. They were my weapons, the elbows, my knees, my head. When they head the ball you come a bit late and head them. You could do those things then, but not today.”
While following the Reds, Aldridge was still banging in the goals in local amateur football for Blue Union, Garston Woodcutters, Cheshire Lines and then one of Merseyside’s best-known non-league sides, South Liverpool, before finally getting his big break into the professional game at the age of 20 in May 1979 when Fourth Division Newport County paid £3,500 for him.
He flourished in South Wales, initially striking up a productive partnership with fellow Scouser Tommy Tynan - who Bill Shankly had signed in 1970 as an apprentice for Liverpool after he won a talent contest in the ECHO - and scoring 87 goals in 198 games at Somerton Park, helping them win promotion to the Third Division as well as the Welsh Cup in his first season and then in his second embarking on a remarkable run to the European Cup Winners Cup quarter-finals where they narrowly lost to East German side Carl Zeiss Jena who had beaten holders Valencia and AS Roma in the previous rounds.
In March 1984, Third Division promotion-chasers Oxford United moved for Aldridge in a £78,000 deal and, after immediately helping the U’s achieve their initial objective of second tier football, in his first full campaign at the Manor Ground he broke the club’s goalscoring record and became the first Second Division player in nearly two decades to score 30 league goals (bagging 34 in all competitions as Jim Smith’s team knocked out Manchester United and gave Everton an almighty scare while reaching the League Cup quarter-finals), his new side winning back-to-back promotions and going up to the top flight for the first time in their history as champions having only gained Football League status 23 years earlier.
Within a month of his First Division debut Aldridge had his first ever goal against his beloved Liverpool, giving Oxford the lead in the Reds’ first ever league visit to the Manor Ground and forcing Alan Kennedy into conceding a late own goal as the newly-promoted side gained a creditable 2-2 draw.
Under the ownership of infamous newspaper magnate Robert Maxwell, the mid 80s would be the greatest period in Oxford’s history as - with Aldridge’s future Liverpool and Republic of Ireland team-mate Ray Houghton providing the bullets for him and strike partner Billy Hamilton - they won the club’s first and to date only major honour by going all the way to Wembley in the League Cup where they trounced Queens Park Rangers 3-0 in the final.
They also defied the odds by avoiding relegation, doing Liverpool a huge favour in the title run-in by beating Everton 1-0 at the Manor Ground in the final week of the season which put Kenny Dalglish’s Double-chasing side’s championship destiny back in their own hands, Aldridge having already been serenaded by the Kop on his first visit to Anfield as an opposing player with the chant “Aldo is a Kopite” when Oxford had lost 6-0 in the March.
The Scouse striker’s seamless adaptation to top-flight football and tally of 23 goals in 39 games - surpassed that season only by double Footballer of the Year Gary Lineker of Everton and West Ham’s Frank McAvennie - was key to Oxford’s escape from the drop in 1985/86, and his fine form continued when the following campaign got underway with a four-goal salvo against Gillingham in the League Cup and the first goal against Manchester United during Alex Ferguson’s reign as manager when the-then hapless Red Devils were beaten 2-0 at the Manor Ground in November 1986.
Liverpool were in the process of figuring out how to replace star striker Ian Rush, whose £3.2m transfer to Italian giants Juventus had been announced the previous summer with the Welshman being loaned back to the Reds for one more season, and Aldridge’s relentless goal-getting in a struggling side - he had bagged another 15 goals in 25 games by the turn of the year - along with his credentials as a die-hard Liverpudlian was making him impossible to ignore.
The Reds swooped in early January with the boyhood Kopite finding out his dreams were finally going to come true on the morning he was due to play for Oxford in a First Division match against Manchester City when room-mate Bobby McDonald told him manager Maurice Evans (who had taken over from Jim Smith in 1985) wanted to see him, joking “You’re off to Liverpool.”
“Arsenal had been constantly named as one of the sides who wanted to sign me”, Aldridge recalled.
“It was also obvious that Ian Rush was on his way to Serie A and would need to be replaced. Being the man to do that job naturally appealed, even if I never dared to think it would actually happen, it was a bit of a pipe dream. I was scoring goals and happy at Oxford which wasn’t a big club but it was a great club. Thankfully Liverpool were the side who wanted to buy me.
“When Maurice told me my head immediately started spinning. Having waited so long to be a Liverpool player I wanted the deal to be done instantly. I couldn’t think about our match which was going to take place in a few hours.
“When I did get out on the pitch I just couldn’t focus properly. Nothing else mattered apart from officially signing from my club. Agonisingly I had to wait until the end of the month before everything fell into place. After thinking about it for years, a few more weeks shouldn’t have made much difference. But it wasn’t good for my state of mind. As much as playing my last game for Oxford saddened me, I was finally going where I always wanted to be. My wife Joan was just as pleased because we were going back home.
“I had an agent called Eric Hall at the time and I was so anxious for the deal to go through, I told him he couldn’t come and do the negotiations for me because Robert Maxwell had said the Daily Mirror, which he owned as well as Oxford, would be getting the exclusive story and he didn’t want anyone to discover what was happening. So I just went up to Anfield on my own and when they put the contract in front of me I just signed, there was no haggling, it wasn’t about money, it was about my dream.”
“Liverpool have been my life”, Aldridge admitted as he put pen to paper on his £750,000 move from Oxford - for who he finished with an impressive tally of 90 goals in 141 matches - on 27th January 1987, a day to remember for more reasons that one as he recalled in his autobiography, ‘My Story’.
"Gathering dust is a newspaper archive is a picture of my first day as a professional at Anfield. Take a closer look and you can see two plasters on my right hand. As my hand was not in a plaster cast, few people would have known it was broken.
“Joan had arranged a party in the Hunts Cross Snooker Club. Touchingly, she had gone to great lengths to make sure all my family and friends were there to celebrate my move to Liverpool. The problem was we all ended up drunk and the night turned sour. I don't know how it started or how it finished, but somewhere in between I allowed my frustration to show by punching a window. If only I'd known there was a brick wall the other side of the glass! Liverpool don't like new players turning up with broken hands, so I reckoned suffering the pain was preferable to telling Kenny Dalglish the truth.
“My first day at Anfield went well. I gave the obligatory interviews, posed for the cameras, and nervously sipped water from a bottle. Then Ron Yeats show up - Big Ron Yeats, the captain of
“All right, John how are you?” he said, grabbing my right hand and shaking it with enthusiasm. The pain shot through my body. On another day, a normal day, I might have fainted. But I had to keep up the facade so I grinned weakly at Big Ron, exchanging polite words with him. Screaming in agony could wait a little longer."
Aldridge’s first Liverpool appearance would come a few weeks later at Aston Villa as a half-time substitute in a 2-2 draw and, although he missed the midweek League Cup semi-final second leg win over Southampton as he was cup-tied having already played in the competition that season for Oxford, Dalglish gave him his full debut when the same opposition returned to Anfield the following weekend for a First Division fixture.
The Saints had ironically been the opposition for Aldridge’s first game at Anfield as an eight-year-old fan alongside his dad in the Main Stand paddock just over 20 years previously in January 1967 and it would be a dream debut for the Scouser who scored the only goal of the game on the hour mark, planting a header past England goalkeeper Peter Shilton from a Jan Molby free-kick to keep Liverpool level on points with Everton at the top of the table.
“I didn’t want the moment to end”, he admitted afterwards. “The roar from the crowd as the ball went in the net was immense. It was a magical moment and as good as all those thousands of times I’d imagined it.”
Although the Southampton winner was Aldridge’s first for Liverpool, it was his 22nd of the season in total and Kopites filing out of Anfield that February afternoon would have been licking their lips at the prospect of the Reds’ strikeforce being bolstered with the former Oxford man’s goals ahead of what looked likely to be another close-run title battle with their Merseyside neighbours but it would prove to be a difficult and frustrating end to the season for all concerned.
Aldridge would not make another starting appearance until the final game of the season away to Chelsea - where he inevitably scored in a 3-3 draw - by which time Liverpool, who had built up a nine-point lead at the top over Everton by mid-March, had lost their championship crown to the Toffees meaning a rare trophy-less season at Anfield after George Graham’s emerging Arsenal side won the League Cup final at Wembley.
Although he always knew he had been brought in ultimately as Ian Rush’s replacement, the lack of game time in those early months did cause Aldridge some concerns and he went in to see Kenny Dalglish about it.
“He just said to me ‘Look John, you’re going to have to be patient because we play through the middle at the moment with the likes of me and Jan Molby feeding Rushie. When you go up front next season we’re getting wide people, lads who will get the ball into the box and play to your strengths so just trust me.’”
The Liverpool manager was as good as his word, bringing in Watford winger John Barnes for £900,000 and paying a British record £1.9m for Newcastle forward Peter Beardsley during the summer, with Aldridge’s good friend and former Oxford team-mate Ray Houghton arriving a few months later to form the new attacking spearhead of one of the most dominant and attractive teams even Anfield had ever seen, the sparkling promise of which was clear almost immediately.
“We played Bayern Munich in a pre-season friendly”, Aldridge recalled, “We’d only been back in training for about a week and it was the first game but I could just tell the link-up between Barnes, Beardsley and myself was going to be special, we just clicked right away. We were getting beat 3-0 at half time but we battered them second half, absolutely battered them and we should have won but for a dodgy referee who gave us nothing. I got a goal and we got it back to 3-2, I scored another and the referee disallowed it for no reason at all but we battered them though even though we’d only been training for about five days and I thought ‘bloody hell, how good’s this?’. Then we went to Oslo and battered a team there. Everything was just so fluent from back to front and I just thought ‘this is going to be even better than what I thought would be’".
A collapsed sewer inside the Kop meant Anfield would have to wait until mid-September for its first glimpse of this exciting new Liverpool side with the Reds’ first three games all having to played away from home but the new boys gelled with the old guard right from the off to well and truly whet appetites as to what would follow.
It was Aldridge who would open Liverpool’s account for the campaign when he nodded home a Barnes cross nine minutes into a tricky-looking opening day fixture away to Arsenal and he would remarkably score in each of the Reds’ first nine league fixtures - all of which bar one away to West Ham - were won, which meant that including his goal at Chelsea on the final day of the previous campaign, he had scored in ten successive top flight matches, a record which still stands to this day.
The last of those consecutive fixtures Aldridge scored in was against early-season pace-setters Queens Park Rangers in mid-October and saw Dalglish’s men hit four goals for the fourth league match running to go top of the First Division for the first time all season and, aside from a brief period in November when they drew three successive games, they would remain there for the rest of the season with no other side ever able to get close enough to cast any doubt over where the championship trophy would be headed.
The QPR game also saw a sublime John Barnes double strike which, with the match being featured on BBC’s Match of the Day highlights programme that night, showcased to the nation the truly special nature of the team Dalglish was putting together, with Ian Rush - back from Italy on a weekend off and watching from the Anfield stands - only able to admire how his former team-mates had kicked on without him.
Everton briefly rocked the boat later that month by knocking the Reds out of the League Cup at Anfield thanks to a late deflected Gary Stevens effort but Liverpool exacted revenge four days later when the sides met again in the league, Aldridge and fellow Scouser Steve McMahon illustrating the fierce commitment running through the side to regain the championship from their neighbours with their passionate reaction to the opening goal in the Reds’ 2-0 win that day, and by the turn of the year Dalglish’s men had opened up a 13-point lead at the top.
“We produced brilliant, breathtaking football”, Aldridge admitted. “The goals were flying in and nobody could cope with us. It was what I’d hoped for as a kid. It was nearly perfect.”
The plaudits kept flooding in, a 2-0 home win in mid-January over Arsenal which featured a typically predatory Aldridge strike at the end of a classic team goal along with a brilliant solo effort from Beardsley causing French legend Michel Platini, working for overseas broadcasters on a game which was viewed by a reportedly global audience of 250 million people to proclaim, “I never thought I’d see an English team playing like this. It was a continental performance. Liverpool played their football on the ground. Arsenal were more typically English, playing the ball through the air. Beardsley’s goal might have been scored by a top French or Italian player.”
Platini was asked to rate Liverpool’s current standing in European terms but replied it was difficult to answer until they had met some of the leading continental sides, an impossibility at the time given the ban on English clubs which had been in place since the 1985 Heysel disaster and it remains a source of some sadness that Aldridge and his team mates were never able to test their greatness on the international stage.
“I’m a realist, we couldn’t do anything about it and could only watch from afar as AC Milan who were a great side dominated in that period but I think we would have more than given them a game”, Aldridge said.
“I think we would have been a major threat to them so they were very fortunate as far as that was concerned but it was what it was and we just had to take it on the chin. I think we definitely would have got to the final if we’d stayed away from AC Milan because it was only really us I think who could have beaten them at that time.”
With the league title virtually a foregone conclusion as the season moved into its final months, history beckoned as a 1-1 draw at Derby towards the end of March equalled Leeds United’s record of 29 games unbeaten at the start of a season but, with Aldridge missing through injury, a 1-0 defeat at Goodison Park of all places scotched the Reds’ hopes of an ‘invincible’ campaign. A second defeat at Nottingham Forest followed in early April but the return league fixture at Anfield a few weeks later produced the stand-out performance of this most stellar of campaigns.
Brian Clough’s side had been arguably Liverpool’s closest challengers for much of the season but were blown away 5-0, Aldridge scoring twice to take his season’s tally to 26 as the Reds moved to within two points of sealing the title and England legend Tom Finney, a former team-mate and close friend of Bill Shankly being moved to exclaim afterwards, “That was the finest exhibition I’ve seen the whole time I’ve played and watched the game. The skills and the speed the game was played at was absolutely tremendous. You couldn’t see it bettered anywhere, not even in Brazil. The moves they put together were fantastic.”
Liverpool’s 16th championship was duly confirmed with four games to spare ten days later following victory over Tottenham at Anfield and attention turned to the Reds’ chances of achieving a second league and FA Cup double in three years where, after wins over Stoke City, Aston Villa, Everton, Manchester City and Nottingham Forest, unfancied Wimbledon lay in wait in the final.
Aldridge had booked the Reds’ passage to Wembley with both goals in the semi-final over Forest at Hillsborough, the second of them winning the BBC’s Goal of the Season competition (which was made up entirely of Liverpool efforts) and in itself a signature strike for the champagne football Dalglish’s men had been producing all campaign, Barnes and Beardsley combining down the left flank with the winger’s cross being met with a thunderous Aldridge volley that almost burst the net.
To the consternation of the tens of thousands of expectant Reds who travelled to the capital and made up the bulk of the Wembley crowd, the so-called ‘Crazy Gang’ of Wimbledon - who had been a non-league side only eleven years before - caused one of the biggest upsets in FA Cup history, riding their luck early on most notably when referee Brian Hill disallowed a Peter Beardsley effort and pulled play back for a foul on the Liverpool forward before moments later the Dons took the lead through a Lawrie Sanchez header.
The fluency which had defined Liverpool’s play for the previous nine months suddenly deserted them with Wimbledon’s long-ball game and robust approach proving even more difficult to play against once they had something to hang on to although they were handed a chance to equalise on the hour mark when Aldridge went down under a challenge from Clive Goodyear and referee Hill generously pointed to the spot. The Scouse forward had converted all eleven penalties he had taken that season in his Golden Boot-winning tally of 29 in all competitions but on this occasion Dave Beasant guessed correctly and parried the ball to safety, making him the first goalkeeper to save a penalty in the FA Cup final. With Dalglish already preparing to send substitute Craig Johnston on in Aldridge’s place before the penalty was awarded, it proved to be an agonising final kick of a goal-laden and successful season for the striker as Bobby Gould's side held out for a famous 1-0 win.
“I felt terrible and really took it to heart”, he admitted. “Kenny said to me, ‘Your two goals in the semi-final got us here so don’t put it all on yourself’ which was good of him but I did, I’m a big Liverpool fan and I just felt I’d let everyone down.
“People don’t remember that I scored nearly 500 goals but what they do always recall without fail is the fact I missed that spot-kick against Wimbledon. Even decades later, somebody still mentions it to me almost every week. It did affect me for a while that summer, I’d be lying if I said it didn’t.”
A welcome distraction presented itself in the form of a trip to West Germany to take part in that summer’s European Championships. Although proudly Liverpool born-and-bred, Aldridge’s grandmother from Athlone qualified him to play for the Republic of Ireland and he had made his international debut two years before while still playing for Oxford, immediately endearing himself to new manager Jack Charlton who was seeking to expand the pool of players he was able to pick from by drawing the England World Cup winner’s attention to the fact his Glasgow-born Manor Ground team-mate Ray Houghton also had heritage from the Emerald Isle.
The pair had become mainstays of Charlton’s side by the time they reached West Germany, the Republic’s first ever appearance in major finals with the Euros back then only featuring eight nations, and they combined for the goal headed home by Houghton which gave them a shock 1-0 win over England in their opening game. After a 1-1 draw against the Soviet Union gained by a spectacular Ronnie Whelan volley, the Irish underdogs were only beaten and eliminated by eventual winners Holland after a late deflected Wim Kieft header.
Aldridge returned to Liverpool with some of his Wembley wounds eased only to find a little over a week before the start of his second full season at Anfield another hurdle to overcome presenting itself - the return of Ian Rush, the star striker he had been brought to replace, after the Welshman put pen to paper on a shock £2.7m transfer back to Anfield following just one season in Italy. His comments at the time showed how the boyhood Liverpudlian - at 29, three years Rush’s senior - was under no illusions of the task at hand if he was going to hang on to the red shirt he’d had to graft through years in the lower leagues to get his hands on.
“I’d settle right now on being just half the player Rushie was at Anfield. And if people give me that kind of recognition when my Liverpool career is over, I’ll remember it as the greatest compliment of my life. Obviously I’d love to be as good as he is, but I can’t get anywhere near him. Nobody can. Granted there is a similarity in the way we look, but that is where the similarity ends.”
The question of whether they could play together would become an eternal debate although the two strikers themselves were never in doubt and their record together when paired up front saw at least one of them score in all but a handful of games. Reflecting years later, Aldridge admitted there were mixed emotions at the time.
“I was gutted when I first heard he was coming back, I’d won the Golden Boot the year before with 29 goals and couldn’t see why we needed another striker. Maybe Kenny didn’t want him going to a different English club instead. Liverpool also took that stance when it came to signing players. The fans obviously wanted him back because he was a great player and rightly adored by everyone.
“The problem was in his absence the style of play had changed. When Rushie had played previously most attacks had gone down the middle. Now it was all out wide with me getting on the end of crosses from the wings. He was no mug when it came to doing the same but I thought it suited me better. I felt it wasn’t broke so there was no need to fix it. We’d played some brilliant football in ’87/88, some people said we were the best ever Liverpool team to watch. Now the side was going to be altered.
“I did think it was strange as Kenny had told me not long after I’d signed we’d be playing out wide once Rushie went and I’d come in but Ian was a friend of mine, I welcomed him back. I just thought I’ll lay down the gauntlet by scoring as many goals as I can and helping the team win and that’s what I tried to do.”
Ever the realist, Aldridge knew goals were what mattered most and reacted in the only way he knew how, scoring twice as the Reds exacted a small modicum of revenge by recovering from a goal down to beat Wimbledon 2-1 in the Charity Shield at Wembley and then bagging a hat-trick on the opening day of the season as Dalglish’s side began their defence of the title with a 3-0 win at Charlton, Rush making his second Liverpool debut as a second half substitute for Peter Beardsley.
The Welsh striker would have to wait until his tenth appearance in mid-October away to Walsall in the League Cup to notch the first goal of his second Liverpool spell and would endure an illness and injury-hit first campaign back at Anfield, bouts of hepatitis and chicken pox as well as a knee injury restricting him to only 32 appearances in 1988/89 (just 23 of them of the start), his final goal tally of eleven being by a distance the lowest of Reds career to date.
Rush’s travails mirrored that of Dalglish’s side, certainly in the first half of the season, as with goalkeeper Bruce Grobbelaar laid low for four months with meningitis and skipper Alan Hansen missing till mid-April with a serious knee injury picked up in an early season friendly at Atletico Madrid along with a number of other injury problems, Liverpool struggled to match their swaggering form of the year before.
Their first defeat came in the fifth league game of the season rather than thirtieth when Newcastle United (who would finish bottom of the league) won at Anfield in early October with further defeats at Luton and Nottingham Forest dropping the Reds as low as seventh. Despite insecurities over his place in the side, Aldridge would ultimately score more goals and play more games - 31 in 47 appearances (42 of them from the start) - than the previous campaign but he initially seemed to pay the price for Liverpool’s indifferent start, being dropped for four matches after the Newcastle defeat despite having managed six goals in the first nine games and then being left out again when the Reds travelled to Villa Park to take on Arsenal in a League Cup third round second replay despite having scored the only goal at Loftus Road against Queens Park Rangers the weekend before.
This would be the fourth meeting of the campaign already between Dalglish’s men and George Graham’s Gunners who were rapidly emerging as serious contenders for honours and Liverpool’s main rivals, a early-season 2-1 defeat at Highbury in the Football League Centenary Trophy being followed by a 1-1 draw at Anfield and goalless extra-time stalemate in the replay at Highbury when the sides were paired together in what was then known as the Littlewoods Cup. The two sides were sent to Birmingham in an attempt to resolve their cup dispute ten days before the first of their monumental First Division encounters that season and a classic ensued, giving some notice of the drama which would follow.
Dalglish initially appeared to be trying out a tactical innovation with midfielder Nigel Spackman supporting Ian Rush in attack at times with Peter Beardsley dropping deeper but it was Arsenal who went in front shortly before the half-hour mark when young forward Paul Merson controlled Michael Thomas’s lofted pass and finished smartly past Mike Hooper. The Gunners were twelve unbeaten and four points ahead of the Reds in the First Division table with a game in hand but Liverpool, despite being without the injured John Barnes and with Rush having to go off just before half time with a hip injury to be replaced by Aldridge, continued to take the game to the Londoners and drew level just after the hour mark through a 25-yard Steve McMahon rocket. Another period of extra-time loomed until, with just three minutes left, intricate play down the right flank between Houghton, McMahon and Barry Venison resulted in the Irish international chipping the ball across to his international team-mate Aldridge who looped a header over goalkeeper John Lukic to send the travelling Liverpudlians behind the goal into jubilant celebrations.
An ecstatic Dalglish said afterwards, “We played as well as I’ve ever seen a Liverpool team play. No team in England will give a better performance this season” with the hope being such a hard-won victory against closely-matched opponents would galvanise the Reds’ campaign.
Aldridge would find the net again a week later when the Reds finally played their hard-won fourth round trip to West Ham but it proved only a consolation goal and his last until mid-January as the Second Division side inspired by two early goals from young midfielder Paul Ince sprung a shock with a 4-1 win - Liverpool’s heaviest defeat in a domestic cup competition since 1939 - to send John Lyall’s side into the quarter-finals. Dalglish’s men bounced back four days later when they travelled to Highbury for the season’s first league meeting with Arsenal, taking a second half lead through a typically brilliant John Barnes solo strike but Alan Smith levelled to grab what would turn out to be an invaluable point for the Gunners, and failure to again hold on to a lead at Anfield the following weekend in the season’s first Merseyside derby would see another costly two points dropped.
Norwich City had been the surprise early-season pace-setters and travelled to Anfield the weekend before Christmas with the Reds looking to get their season back on track but Andy Townsend’s goal opened up an eight-point lead over Liverpool who dropped to eighth and were now five games without a win, with the press sharpening their knives and sensing the final demise of Anfield’s two decades of domination. A Rush winner at Derby County on Boxing Day provided brief respite but the Reds’ inconsistency was highlighted by a shocking late collapse at Old Trafford on New Year’s Day, when despite taking a 70th minute lead through Barnes, three immediate goals in seven minutes gave Alex Ferguson’s struggling side a 3-1 win, brought a fifth league defeat of the season and left any hopes of defending the title seemingly in tatters and all but over.
Aldridge’s form had suffered along his team’s and, after being an unused substitute in the previous month’s games against Norwich and Derby, found himself again on the bench when Liverpool travelled to Hillsborough on 14th January to take on relegation-threatened Sheffield Wednesday. Goals from Mark Proctor and Imre Varadi put the Reds two behind after only quarter of an hour but the Garston-born striker was thrown on for Steve McMahon early in the second half and, after Steve Nicol pulled a goal back with fifteen minutes left, the substitute bulleted home a header two minutes later to grab a point and end his seven-game scoring drought.
It proved to be a big turning point in the season as a fantastic run of 11 wins and two draws following the Old Trafford defeat propelled Liverpool right back into the title race, with Aldridge regaining his place in the side and his scoring touch with 10 goals in just 13 games. The Reds had stood 19 points - albeit with three games in hand - behind league leaders Arsenal, whose strong form in the new year had seen them take top spot from Norwich, at the start of March but a ninth successive Liverpool win at Millwall on 11th April put the Reds top of the First Division for the first time all season, level on points with the Gunners but boasting a superior goal difference, with six matches each left to play.
“It was in Arsenal’s hands and all we could do was try and put pressure on them”, Aldridge recalled. “Kenny had chopped and changed a fair bit first half of the season and I think maybe one of the reasons to blame was three of us - me, Rushie and Peter - fighting for spots so there was no continuity in many ways like there had been the season before when we hardly changed the side. I think that cost us and we lost our way a little bit but we got our belief back and just went on this run and it was brilliant, like being back to the season before. We played unbelievably well to get ourselves back in the race and put the pressure right back on to Arsenal who suddenly started dropping a few points here and there.”
From the gloom of mid-winter, Liverpool’s season was now blooming into life with long-term injury absentees Alan Hansen and Ian Rush on the brink of returning to action and the possibility of another league and FA Cup double again on the cards. Victories over Carlisle United, Millwall, Hull City and Brentford had set up a repeat of the previous year’s semi-final with Nottingham Forest at Hillsborough and thousands of Liverpudlians travelled over the Pennines to Sheffield on a beautiful spring morning full of excitement and belief that their team were on an unstoppable march to glory again. Alas, Saturday 15th April 1989 would be a day that changed the lives of countless people, as well as the city of Liverpool and the game of football, forever.
After serious concerns raised after the draw by Liverpool over the arrangements following the previous year’s encounter were ignored by the Football Association, catastrophic crowd mismanagement before the kick off by the South Yorkshire Police led to a lethal crush inside the caged pens of the Leppings Lane terrace Liverpool had been allocated, with an inadequate emergency response that included dozens of ambulances being left outside and prevented from trying to save lives by police fixated with non-existent hooliganism, ultimately meaning 97 innocent men, women and children were unlawfully killed in Europe’s worst ever sporting disaster.
The city of Liverpool was plunged into grief with boyhood Kopite Aldridge deeply affected and for a time considering whether he would ever be able to play football again.
“If I hadn't become a footballer it is almost certain I would have been in the middle of the Leppings Lane terrace”, he wrote in his autobiography.
“In the days when I was a fan I would never have considered missing an FA Cup semi-final involving Liverpool so I have to assume I would have travelled with everyone else to Sheffield. Fate decreed I was not on the Leppings Lane terrace but on the Hillsborough playing field instead, initially oblivious to what was going on. I was the Liverpool player furthest away from that end when the first fans came on to the pitch and I assumed it was some kind of pitch invasion. At six minutes past three, the players were ushered off the field and into the dressing-rooms and on our way there we had the first inkling that, far from crowd trouble being the reason for the delay, there had in fact been a tragedy. I overheard people talking of serious injuries to Liverpool fans and, worse still, deaths. Deaths? At a football match? I could not comprehend it.
“In the dressing-room, Kenny Dalglish told us to keep warm as the match was bound to re-start. But he was walking round nervously, refusing to sit down. Most of us were seated, though some were standing, doing stretches and simple exercises. Some were reading the programme. I don't remember what I was doing but I do remember seeing fans walking past the dressing-room door with tears in their eyes. The referee Ray Lewis came into our dressing-room at around half-past three and told us to be ready to go back on as the match, he said, would re-start as soon as possible.
“It was only when we heard screaming outside the dressing-room that we finally understood something wasn't right. Kenny went out into a corridor and I heard a fan shouting at him, 'People are dying, Kenny' or words to that effect, and at four o'clock, Ray Lewis came back to say the match had been abandoned. The confirmation that Liverpool fans had died reached us while we were getting changed. Some of us were showering, though some had already put their clothes back on. Again, I don't remember exactly what I did. I looked over to John Barnes and could see tears in his eyes. He was sitting there quietly, not wanting to be disturbed. A few of the other players looked stunned. I couldn't talk. Nobody could.
“I knew of people, fun-loving Liverpool supporters, who had tickets for the Leppings Lane terrace. My friends. Naturally, I had to find out whether or not they were safe. But how? My dad was in the stand above, he was in bits and later told me what he had seen, like a tide going out and leaving rubble behind. Kenny was determined to keep us all together in the dressing room, out of the way. When we were all dressed, the Liverpool manager told us to go quietly to the players' lounge upstairs. Minute by minute we could feel the situation getting worse. Even before we got into the lounge we could see the girls working there were sobbing. They obviously knew more than us. At the other side of the lounge there was a television screen showing live pictures. The reporter spoke of deaths, the figure rising minute by minute. It was only when I got home that night that it all began to sink in. I was watching television with Joan and, inevitably, it was the main story on the news. That was when we broke down as on, bursting into tears and hugging each other. We cried for most of the night and slept little.
“Kenny telephoned me the following morning. He said he wanted me to join the rest of the players at Anfield for a meeting. In the immediate aftermath of Hillsborough, Kenny showed tremendous leadership qualities a lot of people didn't think he possessed. He told us to be dignified and insisted we set an example. In the afternoon, I took my daughter, Joanne, to Anfield to lay some red roses by the Shankly Gates. There were already a lot of scarves tied to the railing - not all of them were Liverpool scarves - and there was an overwhelming scent of flowers in the air. I didn't want to be seen but a group of reporters had spotted me. That spoiled what should have been a private moment. I was, after all, a Liverpool fan. I wanted the same anonymity as any other person, I deserved it.
“We had a special mass at the Catholic Cathedral that night. Again, the enormity of what had happened hit me hard. We were beginning to see how it was affecting the city. People were breaking down, not really knowing what to do. All the players were at the Cathedral that night to hear Bruce Grobbelaar read the lesson. Each player dealt with the tragedy in his own way. My first tangible response was to pull out of the Republic of Ireland's World Cup qualifying match against Spain in Dublin on 26th April. Playing football was the last thing I wanted to do, I had no motivation. I remember giving an interview to the Echo in which I said I didn't care if I never played again. I meant every word. For the two weeks following the disaster I was in a state of shock, helpless to do anything. I feel no shame in admitting Hillsborough affected me mentally for a time, a long time. I couldn't cope, it weakened me physically, emotionally and mentally.
“The thought of training never entered my head. I remember trying to go jogging but I couldn't run. There was a time when I wondered if I would ever muster the strength to play. I seriously considered retirement. I was learning about what was relevant in life. I didn't really see the point in football. Reading about the parents who lost sons or daughters at Hillsborough made me think of my own children. My son, Paul, was only seven at the time. I was only a little older when I went to my first football match in the 1960s. Paul and Joanne have never been less than the most important things in my life, yet after Hillsborough they became more precious, if that was possible. We all became closer as a family.
“The Liverpool players spent much of their time talking to people affected by the tragedy. It meant going into hospitals to see the injured. In some cases, it meant trying to talk people out of comas. I was asked to try and do that for a young lad called Lee Nicol from Bootle. Lee was fourteen but looked about ten and reminded me of my son, Paul, he looked a lovely kid. Lee was in the middle of the crush but still alive when he was pulled out. As he lay there in a coma, I whispered words into his ears. I asked the doctor about his chances of recovery. ‘He's clinically dead John’, he replied. I hadn't realised how badly Lee was injured and that news ripped into me. My heart went out to Lee's family, decent people who didn't deserve to be victims of such a tragedy. He passed away on the Tuesday shortly being visited by Princess Diana and became the 95th person to die after the disaster.
“Within days, Anfield became a shrine after the club agreed to open up the ground for people to leave tributes and pay their respects, with eventually over half the pitch and all of the Kop being covered in flowers, scarves, flags and momentos. It was one of the most beautiful but heartbreaking sights I have ever seen. Anfield was open house with players and wives on hand to offer words of comfort and support. Joan and I found this particularly difficult. We were not trained in these skills and sometimes it was difficult to know what to say. We had experienced bereavement in our own family but nothing on this scale. We were being asked to console people at a time when we needed it ourselves.
“All the players went to as many funerals as we could. I had only ever been to one before Hillsborough when my grandmother died but I went to eleven in total. They were all so difficult to handle but one in particular killed me.. in those days you had drive yourself, I didn’t know what day it was by that stage to be fair and my head was all over the place but I got there, paid my respects and was sitting in the church behind the family when the coffin came in, followed by a smaller one. I didn’t know that it was a father and son, Thomas Howard and his 14-year-old lad Tommy junior. I hadn’t been told and that broke me, just snapped me in two.
“I think people sometimes forget about how Hillsborough affected the players. Ray Houghton said the experience of visiting so many hospitals and attending so many funerals made him more upset than he'd ever been before. Alan Hansen, the Liverpool captain, was said to be visibly shaking at times. Bruce Grobbelaar had, like myself, considered retirement. Steve McMahon claimed the Hillsborough tragedy was a watershed in his life and made him grow up almost overnight. Players openly wept in front of each other, which was incredible. There had never been such a display of emotion among the Liverpool players before. Usually we spent most of the our time taking the mick out of each other, but Hillsborough pulled down the façade and showed us up for what we were: vulnerable human beings. What it was all doing to Kenny Dalglish would become apparent when he resigned as Liverpool manager in 1991, but at the time he did a remarkable job and was dignified throughout, working tirelessly to help however he could. I think he realised, for perhaps the first time, how much Liverpool Football Club meant to the ordinary person in the street. This, of course, carried with it certain responsibilities but Kenny was up to the challenge. He proved himself to be a good listener to those who had something to get off their chests.
“I was at rock bottom but my wife Joan was brilliant, she got me going and my dad helped as well along with even the bereaved families, I was getting lovely messages from them saying ‘so-and-so wouldn’t want you not to play, John” which helped focus me again, as did going to Celtic for a friendly game they arranged just over a fortnight later which was the first time we played as a team after the disaster.
“I’ve always been a Celtic fan since the Lisbon Lions so that day at Celtic Park was extraordinary, the way they opened their arms out to us that day.. I’ll never ever forget what they did, not just for the club and the fans but for the players that day, we were treated absolutely unbelievably. I came on off the bench and we won 4-0 which was irrelevant but I scored two and that got me back into it, it wouldn’t surprise me if Celtic allowed me to score those goals they were that good to us. I’d always liked Celtic and followed them from afar but since that day they’ve got a very special place in my heart.”
After discussions with the families of those whose lives were lost and the football authorities, Liverpool returned to competitive action fittingly with a Merseyside derby at Goodison Park against Everton who had stood shoulder-to-shoulder with their Merseyside neighbours in the aftermath of the disaster, having booked their place in the FA Cup final with victory over Norwich City at Villa Park in the other semi-final that fateful day only two and half weeks earlier.
Aldridge had Liverpool’s best chance of what was a pulsating goalless draw early in the second half, being brilliantly denied by Neville Southall from point blank range after the legendary Welsh goalkeeper had palmed Peter Beardsley’s cross-shot into his direction. He was substituted shortly afterwards for the returning Ian Rush, who came off the bench to make his first appearance since early February.
“I was really p***ed off because I thought Kenny was going to leave me on the bench the bench for the replayed FA Cup semi-final the following weekend. So I went and took out my frustrations in the dressing room. I lost the plot completely and started trashing the place. I think it was a combination of frustration and my grief coming out after all that had gone on. I’d been to so many funerals I think it took its toll.”
To his relief, Aldridge kept his place in the team for the replayed semi-final at Old Trafford (and all of Liverpool’s remaining games that season) and scored twice in Liverpool’s 3-1 win, a looping header after only four minutes when goalkeeper Steve Sutton couldn’t hold John Barnes fierce shot and then a poacher’s far-post nod just before hour mark to put the Reds back in front after Neil Webb had equalised before half time. It set up the second all-Merseyside FA Cup final in four years and, given the emotion-filled circumstances, were the most important goals of Aldridge’s career.
"Building up to the replayed semi-final, I have to say my stomach and my insides were in knots. The thought of us not winning that game was horrible. The pressure on us to win and reach the final against Everton was enormous because the thought of us not being there was unthinkable.
"We had to win it for the fans who died and the bereaved families and we were all very aware of that. It was more important than the final in many ways. They were without doubt the most important goals I ever scored.
"The sense of relief at the end of the game was huge.. wow. Hard to put into words. We were almost celebrating the fact that we didn't lose, more than that we'd actually won it.
"There was a tremendous sense of achievement that - with the eyes of the world on us - we'd done what we needed to do for the families and the survivors, and that the city was going to have a day out at Wembley after all we'd been through in the previous weeks."
Before the Wembley showpiece however, Liverpool’s attention had to turn back to the title race they had lost ground in after dropping two points to Everton on their return to league action. The Football Association’s insistence that all outstanding fixtures be played before England’s Rous Cup fixture with Scotland at Hampden Park on 27th May meant the Reds would be forced to play eight matches in 23 days, with the final one of them being Arsenal’s postponed trip to Anfield which was due to have been played the weekend after Hillsborough. Three days after winning the replayed semi-final, the Reds faced their first match back at Anfield after the disaster with Nottingham Forest ironically the opponents and it took a nerveless 81st minute Aldridge penalty to secure the three points.
The following weekend the Reds’ hopes of staying in the race were hanging by a thread at Plough Lane when they trailed old foes Wimbledon at half-time following an Alan Hansen own goal but an Aldridge equaliser and John Barnes winner secured another victory which became even more valuable when Dalglish’s men returned to the dressing room to learn a Dean Saunders double had given Derby County a shock 2-1 win over Arsenal at Highbury. It meant Liverpool’s title destiny was now firmly in their own hands moving them only two points behind the Gunners having played a game less.
The two title contenders were in action the following midweek, Liverpool warming up on the Tuesday for their Wembley occasion against Everton with a comfortable 2-0 win over Queens Park Rangers - Aldridge scoring again to make five goals in his last four games - before the following night Arsenal were held 2-2 at home by Wimbledon meaning they would now almost certainly have to win their final match of the season at Anfield at the end of the following week if they were to be crowned champions.
Merseyside then decamped to London for the day as Liverpool and Everton met at Wembley for an FA Cup final very much played in tribute to those who had been killed, bereaved and injured in Sheffield five weeks earlier. Gerry Marsden led an emotional ‘You’ll Never Walk Alone’ tribute on the pitch before kick off and, when the action got underway, the two sides played out a classic with Aldridge gaining almost immediate redemption for his penalty heartache of twelve months previous.
Only four minutes had been played when Steve Nicol, who had just been voted Football Writers' Player of the Year after an outstanding season in which he again proved his versatility in a number of positions, found Steve McMahon’s run which had split the Toffees’ defence and the midfielder’s square pass found Aldridge 12 yards out who, from virtually the same spot as where his last kick of the previous year’s final had been saved by Dave Beasant, caressed a magnificent strike with his first touch of the match into the top corner of the net with Neville Southall rooted.
“I’m not one for believing in fate or omens or things like that but that was strange”, Aldridge later said. “There could have been 97 reasons who made that happen, you just couldn’t write it, it was unbelievable and does make you wonder if there are things that happen we don’t know about and can’t understand, just crazy. To score that goal was lovely and meant the world to me, I have to say I did feel really sorry for Everton Football Club that day because they wanted to win the Cup, and the way they and the whole city had pulled together after what happened was magnificent. It was a shame we had to beat Everton but it was lovely that it was a Merseyside occasion and the Blues played their part in a great game, they played a really tough match against us in impossible circumstances for them really.”
In broiling May heat, Liverpool dominated much of the game without getting a second goal - Aldridge making way for substitute Ian Rush 18 minutes from the end of normal time - and Everton equalised through a scrambled Stuart McCall effort in the last minute to force extra time but the Welsh marksman repeated his brace from the 1986 final against the Blues either side of another McCall strike to secure the Reds’ fourth FA Cup triumph in what Dalglish would go on to describe as the most satisfying achievement of his career given the poignant context.
The two sides embarked on an open-top bus tour the following day to thank the people of Merseyside for their support but Liverpool’s celebrations had to be restrained with two more matches still to play in their quest to achieve the double ‘Double’. They still lay three points behind Arsenal - with the sides level on goal difference - but had their game in hand against West Ham at Anfield to play on the Tuesday before the Friday night showdown against the Gunners 72 hours later.
The Hammers needed to win their final game of the season to escape relegation and, after Aldridge continued his scoring run by putting Liverpool ahead after 20 minutes, gave themselves hope and briefly set Anfield nerves jangling when Leroy Rosenior equalised shortly afterwards but four goals in the final half hour from Houghton (2), Rush and Barnes sealed a 5-1 win and condemned the Londoners to the drop, the fifth and final strike making Arsenal’s task on the following Friday night even harder. With Liverpool now three points clear and having a +4 goal difference, the Gunners - who had not managed a victory at Anfield since 1975 - would have to win by two clear goals to equal the Reds’ goal difference, which would mean they would take the title by virtue of goals scored over the course of the 38 league games.
In front of a packed Anfield and global television audience of millions, Liverpool’s gruelling marathon campaign concluded with the most dramatic climax to a title race ever witnessed. Arsenal emerged from the tunnel with all eleven players carrying bouquets of flowers in memory of those lost at Hillsborough which they distributed amongst the crowd before kick off before the game inevitably settled into a tense affair with neither side wanting to make the mistake given the high stakes. The Reds’ hopes of getting the goal which would make the Gunners’ task even tougher were hit when Ian Rush had to be substituted just after the hour mark through injury and replaced by Peter Beardsley but a goalless first half without too many alarms left Dalglish’s men 45 minutes away from regaining their title.
The atmosphere changed seven minutes into the second half when full back Nigel Winterburn’s inswinging free-kick seemed to go straight into the net but, after lengthy Liverpool complaints and discussions with his linesman, referee David Hutchison adjudged striker Alan Smith to have got a faint touch on the ball with his head and awarded the goal to put Arsenal in front and one more away from glory. Amid indescribable tension the two best sides in the country fought out the final half hour of the campaign, Michael Thomas wasting the Gunners’ best opportunity with 15 minutes remaining when he fired a clear opening straight at Grobbelaar, with Aldridge and Houghton unable to take the half chances late on which came their way.
The referee’s watch was ticking into a second minute of stoppage time when in Arsenal’s final attack Lee Dixon’s punt forward found Smith who controlled instantly and hooked forward to the on-rushing Michael Thomas, who benefited from a fortunate ricochet back into his path off Steve Nicol which put him clean through on goal, and the London-born midfielder kept his nerve to prod the ball beyond Grobbelaar and into the net to send the travelling Gunners behind the goal into delirium.
Liverpool desperately launched the ball forward from the kick off in search of the one goal that would save them but the final whistle sounded seconds later to confirm Arsenal as champions with Aldridge and his team-mates slumping to the turf into dejected exhaustion. The shell-shocked Anfield crowd stayed to applaud the Gunners as Tony Adams lifted the trophy and to also salute their own heroes who had given everything and more over the course of a seismic campaign.
“That Arsenal game was the hardest football thing I’ve ever gone through, obviously apart from the disaster itself”, Aldridge admitted. “I think the worst thing we ever did was beat West Ham 5-1 on the Tuesday which meant Arsenal now had to win by two, if we’d had to go out and get a draw that day or even beat Arsenal we’d have approached the game differently which admittedly is easy to say now. We were very cautious and conservative on the night and didn’t play our natural game, we didn’t have to score or win and, while we never deliberately tried to sit back or anything, it had to have an impact on our mentality and it cost us in the end.”
After a much-needed summer break, Aldridge returned for pre-season determined to help the Reds win the league their title back but it soon became clear to him the concerns he felt over his future in the side when Ian Rush returned the previous year were still there and would not go away.
“Sometimes, no matter how badly you don’t want something to happen, there is little you can do to prevent it. It’s hugely frustrating but eventually you just have to try your best to salvage something from the situation. Everybody knows I never wanted to leave Liverpool and would happily have stayed there forever but it appeared everything had fallen into place to facilitate my departure from the club I loved. Even though we were good mates and had proved we could play together, Rushie’s return was never going to be good news for me and I was always aware of that. I told Kenny I wouldn't go if he'd give me a chance but he made it clear that Ian and Peter were his preferred front two and so, with the World Cup in Italy coming up the following summer, I realised I couldn't hang around and just sit on the bench.”
After being left on the bench for the Charity Shield victory over Arsenal at Wembley and Liverpool’s opening league fixtures against Manchester City and Aston Villa then only getting 17 minutes from the bench in the third match at Luton, matters came to a head when the Reds travelled to Spain to play an early-season friendly against Real Madrid in which the striker again found himself named as substitute.
“After the game I spotted Peter Robinson and Liverpool chairman John Smith chatting with men who I had learned were from Real Sociedad. I was confused and wanted to know what was going on so I interrupted their discussion, even though I didn’t receive any straight answers. When I got back to Liverpool I asked Kenny about it and he told me talks between the clubs were ongoing. His advice was: ‘Don’t undersell yourself.’ As it all slowly sank in that I was leaving I was devastated.
“£15,000 was what Liverpool were willing to pay me to join Sociedad. ‘P*** off’, I told a shocked Peter Robinson when I heard this. Unlike some players, I wasn’t always being transferred to rake in the cash through different pay-offs and signing-on fees. At the same time, I wasn't going to be treated like an idiot as I felt rightly or wrongly that I was being forced out of the club I loved. My argument was they were going to make £400,000 profit out of the deal and were only giving me a tiny percentage of that figure. Robinson countered with the point I could have been rubbish when they took the chance on an Oxford United striker. I was quick to respond with my goalscoring record - 63 in 104 appearances for Liverpool - figures that proved I’d done well. £250,000 was what I told them I wanted even though I never expected to receive it. Eventually after a chat with Dennis Roach, an agent who brokered the deal for the two clubs, they offered me a different but acceptable sum.”
Speculation over Aldridge’s future and Sociedad’s interest had swirled during an early-season international break, Liverpool returning to action with a 3-0 victory at Derby that saw him again left on the bench and the Guardian reporting afterwards that officials from the Basque club were due to to fly to Merseyside to resume talks, adding the decision to sell Aldridge “has astonished the Anfield faithful, who made a point of applauding him during the pre-match kick-in at the Baseball Ground”.
By the time Crystal Palace arrived at Anfield the following Tuesday night the finer points of Aldridge’s £1.15m transfer to Spain had been all but all but ironed out with the 30-year-old striker aware this would most likely be his final chance to pull on the red shirt. He was again only named as substitute and had to watch from the bench as his soon-to-be former team-mates tore into the newly-promoted Londoners, going five goals up by the hour-mark. A few minutes later, Liverpool were awarded a penalty and - with Aldridge warming up and the Kop chanting his name - Dalglish immediately brought him on for Peter Beardsley.
“All I wanted was the chance to get one more goal. It was a nice gesture from Kenny to send me on as a substitute and I got immense pleasure in putting the ball in the net from 12 yards. If I had to leave the club then this was the best way to do it, scoring a goal at the Kop end and having the crowd show their appreciation for what I had given the club over the years. At the final whistle I didn’t really know what was going on or what to do. Throwing my shirt into the Kop, followed by my socks and boots, was completely unplanned. Partially because I was emotional and partially because I’d already taken off most of my kit, I didn’t remain on the pitch for too long. The fans gave me a standing ovation and the lads applauded me too. Back in the dressing room, I had a massive lump in my throat and I had to lock myself in the toilet for a few minutes to compose myself.”
Speaking after Liverpool’s 9-0 win that night, their biggest ever victory in the First Division, Dalglish acknowledged the bittersweet nature of the evening and Aldridge’s situation, saying “Obviously the evening is tinged with sadness as it looks as if he is on his way. He’s our most popular player. He’s achieved a lifetimes’s ambition by playing for the club and contributing so much to it. We’re only selling him because we can’t give him what he deserves.”
Less than 48 hours later, Aldridge and his wife flew to Spain where he was unveiled as a Sociedad as the brutal reality of his departure set in.
“Suddenly I wasn’t a Liverpool player any more. Something that I’d wanted so badly for so long had been taken away from me against my will. I’d lived my dream, had a stint at my club and it was now over. Like me, the people on the streets couldn’t believe it either, plenty of them have told me exactly that since then. I got a letter from a 70-year-old Liverpool fan who’d followed the club since he was a kid who said he wasn’t going to go to any more matches because of the way I’d been treated. An awful lot of people realised I’d been treated poorly. I didn’t want to go but when the opportunity to go to San Sebastian arose I fancied it. I spoke with Joan and she was scared about moving abroad, the kids were young too and we had to weigh up the options. The money Sociedad were offering was phenomenal and would see me getting roughly five times what I had been on at Liverpool. Over the three years of my contract it would be enough to guarantee us a decent future and it really was too good to turn down.”
They did not initially receive the warmest of welcomes. As part of the proud Basque nation, Real Sociedad - like neighbouring Athletic Bilbao - usually employed only home-grown players and Aldridge’s transfer made him the first non-Basque player to join the club in over 40 years. Protestors turned up outside the hotel where he met with club officials, ‘no outsiders’ was scrawled on the walls of the training ground in Spanish and someone in the street spat on the floor in front of him during those uncertain early weeks. But getting off the mark with a double against Barcelona in his fifth game help begin to bring the barriers down and Aldridge’s goals, along with his willingness to learn the language and adapt to life in his new country, soon made him as loved in San Sebastián as he was on Merseyside.
By the following March he had became the first player in the club’s 86-year history to score in six straight games, receiving 40 bottles of wine and 20 kilos of Spanish sausages as a reward. His tally of 16 goals saw him finish fourth in the La Liga’s top scorer ‘Pichichi’ standings as Sociedad qualified for the UEFA Cup and though the team struggled more in his second season despite the arrival of fellow Brits Dalian Atinson and Kevin Richardson, Aldridge’s 17 goals was just three short of Real Madrid legend’s Emilio Butragueno’s 'Pichichi'-winning total.
One year remained on his contract but, with his family ready to come home, a move back to England was on the cards with Leeds United and Everton mooted as possible destinations for the 32-year-old whose impressive tally of 40 goals in 63 games for Sociedad showed his predatory powers were still intact but he shocked the football world by returning home to Merseyside and signing for Tranmere Rovers in a £250,000 deal. Four years earlier, only a last-day escape had prevented the Birkenhead club becoming the first to be automatically relegated from the Football League but, under the guidance of Bill Shankly acolyte Johnny King, two promotions in three years had returned them to the second tier of English football for the first time since 1939.
A winning goal against Liverpool in the last pre-season friendly of the summer five days before his Rovers debut at Brighton where he inevitably scored both in a 2-0 win set the tone for the final goal-laden chapter of Aldridge’s playing career where, after scoring a club-record 40 goals in his first season, he spearheaded the greatest period in Tranmere’s history. With ammunition provided from the flanks by ex Chelsea and Scotland winger Pat Nevin and former Everton apprentice Johnny Morrissey alongside talented youngsters like Kenny Irons, Chris Malkin, Ged Brannan, Tony Thomas and Ian Nolan, for three successive seasons Aldridge's goals took Tranmere on the brink of top-flight football for the first time in their history only to full just short each time after reaching the play-offs to get into the Premier League, also coming within a whisker of reaching the League Cup final before a controversial semi-final defeat to Aston Villa on penalties.
Aldridge would take over from Johnny King in April 1996, initially as player-manager before finishing with a brace against Wolves in his final game as a professional two years later at the age of 39 to leave his Tranmere tally at a more than respectable 174 goals in 287 appearance which included nine hat tricks. Although the club never again threatened promotion under his stewardship, Aldridge’s time in the Prenton Park hot-seat elevated their reputation as cup giant-killers to a new level, taking them to their first ever major final in the League Cup in 1999/2000 when they lost narrowly to Leicester City as well as reaching the FA Cup quarter-finals, the latter feat being repeated the following season when after demolishing Everton 3-0 at Goodison Park and producing an incredible fightback from three goals down to beat Glenn Hoddle’s Southampton, they were defeated 4-2 by eventual Treble winners Liverpool.
Aldridge would resign soon afterwards with Tranmere’s cup exploits unable to prevent them from sliding into relegation trouble and he would never again return to management despite twice applying for the Republic of Ireland job. His natural enthusiasm and love for football and Liverpool along with his vast knowledge and experience of the game made him a natural fit for a career in the media, with his passionate commentaries and vociferous celebrations when things have gone well providing the soundtrack for many Reds’ successes of modern times.
His goalscoring record bears comparison with anyone to have played the game, the art of finding the net simply being in the blood of a man who once memorably described it as like a illness, “My illness was I had to score goals! If I didn't score goals I was sick”. His overall tally of 476 goals in 889 matches puts him top of the list of all time post-war goalscorers in British football ahead of Jimmy Greaves, a peer of Aldridge’s own boyhood idol Sir Roger Hunt who said of him, “His anticipation and eye for goal was outstanding. He had a terrific positional sense, was very good in the air and a very cool penalty taker as well. I’m pleased and proud to think I inspired John as a kid on the Kop.”
The fact he scored well over 200 goals after leaving Liverpool at the age of nearly 31 means the decision to let him go, particularly in light of the decline the club soon afterwards fell into, will always be regarded as hasty by many, with the man who sold him Kenny Dalglish never in any doubt over what he brought to Anfield and admitting, “When I was at Liverpool the fans took Aldo to their hearts because they knew he was one of their own, and the players all had a high regard for him both as a professional and as a person.”
For Aldridge himself, for all the accolades, plaudits, matchballs and medals he picked up during a life in football the greatest of them was simply being able to fulfil the dream he had when first taken to Anfield at the age of eight.
“I was brought up in an environment under the bridge in Garston where football and cricket and Liverpool FC was a massive part of our lives and community and what we all loved. Family and football is my life and wherever I’ve gone I’ve put my heart and soul into it, just like I did when I supported Liverpool as a kid home and away on the special trains. That’s why I go crazy when I’m doing the commentaries, it’s in my blood and I just can’t help it, I’m still like a teenager at times because I’m so passionate. That's just the way I am and the way I’ve been brought up.
“My Anfield career may have ended badly but there were plenty of great moments. Singling out just one is almost impossible, every game was huge. I think that’s one of the reasons why I loved it so much. I won league and FA Cup medals, with the Cup win in ’89 being really important after what had happened at Hillsborough.
“I’ve been lucky. At Newport and Oxford I also won medals, many players never win any. I finished with plenty including the Golden Boot too which was so special because I’d done it for the club I loved, at the ground I loved. If I had achieved it with another side I would have pleased but it would not have been as good. By picking that up you are setting standards and proving you are one of the best in the country.”
“But the biggest honour for me wasn’t any of those - it was just wearing that red shirt of Liverpool.”
