Why Jordan Henderson deserves to be mentioned as one of Liverpool’s most influential players ever

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Liverpool supporters have had plenty of new heroes to add to their club’s annals of best players in the past decade, with a golden era emerging under Jurgen Klopp.While younger generations have listened to their parents and grandparents talk at length about the legends that are Kenny Dalglish, Ian Rush, Graeme Souness and John Barnes, fresher, more modern players have been adding their names to the list.But while Mohamed Salah is widely seen as being the Klopp player most worthy of being mentioned among greats such as Dalglish and Steven Gerrard, re-framing the question slightly should put Jordan Henderson right in the picture too. What if the issue were not one of the best Liverpool player of all-time, but the most influential?

Older fans would pick out Dalglish for his influence as the talisman of the Reds’ best ever teams, while newer supporters will argue that nobody could match Gerrard for impact.While both remain ahead of Henderson without question, and others such as Souness, Rush, John Barnes and Salah do as well, the former captain deserves to be in the conversation.The facts are that Henderson led Liverpool to a trophy that Gerrard never could: the Premier League title. Gerrard’s biggest drawback in this argument is that he never won the trophy he forever craved, but Henderson did.In fact, having captained Liverpool to a Champions League and Premier League win, the current Chelsea midfielder can stand up to most players in the Reds’ history.Others have won far more, and Henderson’s eight doesn’t come close to matching Alan Hansen or Phil Neal, for example, who both won 19 trophies with Liverpool, but he is one of only four men (along with Emlyn Hughes, Phil Thompson and Graeme Souness) who lifted the two biggest trophies on offer as captain.And this was not just any old good Liverpool team.

Henderson was the heartbeat of that team, and it is fairly certain that the Reds would not have managed any of it without him.So, while the former captain is never going to trouble any all-time Liverpool players lists in terms of the greats to have graced the club, he absolutely deserves to be spoken about as one of the most influential we have ever seen at Anfield. Some may continue to scoff, but there is a reason Liverpool were so, so good under Klopp, and while Salah, Mane and the rest played their own roles, Henderson’s was one of the absolute biggest.