In every way possibly imaginable, Andy Robertson has been the perfect player for Liverpool Football Club, the city and its supporters…
I HAD already started writing something in preparation for today about attitude, connection and representation.
And then the news broke that Andy Robertson would leave Liverpool at the end of the season.
I wanted to say how all of this is complex and layered. How there’s nuance and contradiction in everything if you look under the bonnet enough.
Robertson is a rare example of clarity. A player and person who emanates honesty and transparency that makes you immediately drawn to him.
When Liverpool signed him it felt opportunistic. He came after a good debut Premier League season despite being relegated with Hull City.
The feeling was that he was a good dressing room addition. That Northern grit, humour and warmth that Liverpool had become wedded to through the years.
It’s easy to feel right after the fact. It’s also trite to believe he was always going to achieve 373 games, 13 goals and 69 assists to date in a Liverpool shirt.
He achieved because his quality is now unquestionable. He was the greatest left-back in world football at one point and has become the best player in that position for the club in 30 years.
He made a Liverpool system work in such a fluid way that he was simultaneously part of a back four and front five at any given moment. He and Trent Alexander-Arnold were assisting each other in games where it was all so complete.
He also achieved because of will. Because he wanted to succeed for this club and because he knew exactly what it meant for people here. He said as much yesterday.
My best Robertson memories aren’t of him charging down Man City players or lifting Premier League titles and European Cups. It’s of him coming out for home games, running towards The Kop and letting out a visceral ‘come on’ and feeling like one of us were out there on the pitch.
There’s been a lot made this week of effort and application around this current squad. In loads of ways it should be hard to relate to millionaires, especially in this city.
Anfield remains an area underpinned by chronic underinvestment and raw community spirit holding it together. This behemoth of a stadium exists completely separate to its surroundings in so many ways.
But we’ve seen in recent years how these two worlds can at least try to marry. How footballers with such different lives can show us they get it. How they want to offer respite and gratitude to the unwavering commitment shown to them.
Whatever your thoughts about certain players or people now at the club, still having the likes of Robertson present reassures me that the messaging of what is expected at Liverpool is being reiterated.
Like Mohamed Salah, the curtain of a golden era will draw ever nearer to fully closed this summer. Only Alisson Becker and Virgil van Dijk will remain.
These players, these mountainous personalities who showed us graft, craft and humility are going to be incredibly hard to let go of.
But Liverpool must win out above all else. It must find a way to succeed with new players and managers we come to know and love.
The die is cast. For many, the greatest Liverpool side of their lives have already been and gone. You’ll talk about Robbo banking what happened in the Camp Nou and cuffing the greatest player of all time around the head at Anfield because that’s exactly what you would’ve done.
He is eminently one of us. I want Evertonians to hate him for an eternity because of how much of a Kopite he is. I want to remember his roaring ‘come on’ before every game. I want to remember the best left-back I’ve ever seen for this club.
I will and we will . Thank you, Robbo. You were a gift to this club and its people in every way.
