MERSEYSIDE WAS IN mourning.
George Harrison, described as the ‘quiet Beatle’, died from lung cancer on 29 November 2001.
The following day, Robbie Fowler, the man who had become known simply as ‘God’ by Liverpool supporters, joined Leeds United.
An outpouring of a different kind of emotion followed.
In the pages of the Liverpool Echo, there was anger more than sadness at Gerard Houllier’s decision to off-load a 26-year-old striker who had scored 171 goals in 330 games.
“What a disgrace.”
“I find this a joke.”
“Our title rivals now probably boast the best strike partnership in the country.”
The Echo’s poll confirmed that 79% of fans disagreed with allowing the deal to go through.
Some joked that a minute’s silence be held before that week’s episode of the Channel 4′s Brookside.
This was a real-life soap opera being played out, and as Liverpool welcome Leeds to Anfield tonight, there will be fans of both clubs celebrating their 21st birthdays who were only born the month before one of the most dramatic transfers in the modern Premier League played out.
Leeds chairman Peter Ridsdale, nicknamed ‘Publicty Pete’ for his penchant for headline-grabbing soundbites, declared Fowler’s capture as “the biggest signing we’ve ever had.”
Quite a statement considering he had bankrolled David O’Leary’s spending to the tune of close to £100m over the previous three seasons in pursuit of glory.
At his unveiling, Fowler was equally effusive. “One thing I will predict is that I can win the league here at Elland Road this season.”
He would not, and his signing would actually signal the end of the largesse. They slumped to a catastrophic fifth-place finish and that failure to qualify for the Champions League was the catalyst for the true extent of club’s financial mismanagement to become known.
Fowler came to be known as one of the poster boys of that period, where previous his face adorned flags on the Kop hailing him as ‘God’.
Yet his demise at Anfield was death by a thousand cuts.
Rafael Benitez would provide the Second Coming in 2006 but the years in between, first at Leeds and then Manchester City, felt like time in the wilderness for the Prodigal Son.
The stats alone do not do justice to the emotional impact Fowler, born and raised in Toxteth, had on Anfield.
In his first full season – 1993/94 – he scored 18 times despite missing a chunk of it with a broken leg. Injuries would eventually begin to take a toll towards the end, but Fowler was only getting started as the Premier League began to change the face of football.
In the next three seasons – aged 18 to 20 – he scored more than 30 goals in each, and he remains the youngest to reach the 50 milestone.
He won the PFA Young Player of the Year award back-to-back in ’95 and ’96, and the following season was lauded for pleading with the referee to change a decision to award a penalty for a dive against Arsenal.
The next day he was hit with a £900 fine from Uefa after displaying the famous t-shirt in support of Liverpool dockers, who had been going on strike at the time, when he scored in the Uefa Cup.
It was such controversy – regardless of a just cause – that would seemingly eventually wear down the relationship with Houllier.
Injuries didn’t help either. A knee issue in February ’98 meant he missed that summer’s World Cup, but less than 12 months later he had scored his 100th Premier League goal and agreed a new four-year contract.
Houllier was in sole charge when that deal was thrashed out – having initially held the position of joint-manager with Roy Evans.
Then, arguably, the beginning of the end after he was hit with two separate misconduct charges by the English FA for incidents less than a month apart.
The first involved a vulgar homophobic taunt to Chelsea defender Graeme Le Saux at Stamford Bridge, with the Guardian describing it as “a gesture with his backside which appeared to question the England full-back’s sexuality.”
While disciplinary proceedings for that were imminent, a second after scoring against Everton in the Merseyside derby led to even greater pressure.
“He was suspended for four games and ordered to pay a record £32,000 fine and costs, for mimicking cocaine-taking when he ‘snorted’ the penalty area white line,” the Guardian again reported.
A month later and Fowler suffered a suspected broken nose on a night out in Liverpool city centre, before he underwent an operation on an ankle injury that October.
In all, Fowler played just 14 times in the 1999/00 season and at the turn of the year the first whispers of a move away became louder. Manchester United were linked with a £15m move only for Houllier to insist his striker was going nowhere.
A second ankle operation was then required as the partnership of Michael Owen and Emile Heskey came to the fore for the French boss.
August of 2000 provided further injury heartache, and this time Houllier seemed genuinely sympathetic to Fowler’s plight after he broke down with another ankle injury 30 minutes into a pre-season friendly with Glentoran in Belfast.
Houllier’s assistant, Phil Thompson, was described as helping to take Fowler off the pitch like he was “carrying a King’s chair”, and it would be a falling out between that duo the next year that would speed up the forward’s exit.
Coincidentally, on that same grim night, Robbie Keane made his debut for Inter Milan away to Bari. It would not be long before the pair were teammates at Leeds.
Still, Fowler’s resilience and desire to continue his Liverpool career was evidenced by the key contributions he would make as they won a treble of Cups at the end of that 00/01 campaign.
Even after being attacked outside Wonder Bar on Merseyside following the hectic Christmas schedule of games, and Aston Villa having a £12m bid rejected, Fowler had an impact.
He scored as Liverpool beat Birmingham City to win the League Cup, netted a late winner against Wycombe Wanderers in the FA Cup semi-final, and while the showpiece against Arsenal in Cardiff would become known as ‘The Michael Owen Final’ because of his two late goals, Fowler likes to tease that it should also be named after him as his introduction on 77 minutes helped turn the tide.
He again came off the bench in the Uefa Cup final against Alaves, and within eight minutes of replacing Heskey scored to put Liverpool into a 4-3 lead.
Victory was secured in extra-time and, three days later, with Liverpool needing to beat Charlton Athletic to qualify for the Champions League, Fowler scored twice, including a sublime overhead goal which he maintains is a favourite from his career.
That summer is when the trouble really began, with one incident during pre-season acting as the catalyst for his departure. As he later wrote in his autobiography, My Life in Football, it was a shot struck too powerfully in the direction of Thompson, who was watching behind the goal, that led to a stand-off when Fowler refused to say sorry having been requested to do so by Houllier.
“Instead of apologising and defusing the incident there and then, I laughed at how upset he was and reminded him that there was a net between him and a potential trip to casualty,” the striker recalled.
“That was that. Thommo trooped off, I carried on with my shooting practice and the whole thing was forgotten. Or so I thought.”
Within three months he was gone, with the intervening period becoming a messy side show. Chelsea’s then managing director, Colin Hutchinson, stated publicly that a deal had been agreed for his transfer to Stamford Bridge the previous Christmas only for it to collapse.
Houllier was enraged. “[Robbie] has got to act not as if he wants away and as if he likes the club. If he says he cares about Liverpool, if he says he likes Liverpool, he is the vice captain he must understand that.”
Once Fowler did apologise, the controversy went cold, but there was soon a far graver sense of anguish around the club when Houllier required emergency heart surgery after being rushed to hospital during a match with Leeds on 13 October.
“Physically, I felt something was wrong, but I did not show that to my players. If you show you are weak, the team will be weak. In my mind, I could not allow that to happen,” he later told the Liverpool Echo about being unwell prior to the incident.
Thompson was placed in caretaker charge and as Houllier began his convalescence, the club gave the green light to sell Fowler.
The week in late November played out bizarrely, with The Times in London describing how Thompson was insisting they wanted the player to stay, that new contract talks would be taking place and there were no bids.
The next day the transfer was announced. “It wasn’t our decision to let him go,” Thompson lamented. “Robbie wants to go and to see a local boy moving on is sad for the club. More than most he felt it difficult to fit in with the rotation system.”
That last point emphasise the changing nature of the game, and how such practices of utilising a larger squad were still in its infancy. As John Giles wrote in his Evening Herald column, while lauding his old club for poaching the player: “Fowler is the game’s first major victim of the rotation system.”
Matt Lawton described Liverpool’s handing of the situation as “mean spirited” in the London Times, and after completing a two-day medical he was unveiled alongside O’Leary and Ridsdale.
“Every time you spend money you put your head on the block. What I do know is that we’ve got a bargain with Robbie. When he’s right there is no better striker in the Premiership,” his new manager enthused.
His first goals would come against Everton on 19 December, netting a brace in a 3-2 win, and while he finished that campaign as the club’s joint-top scorer alongside Mark Viduka with 12 in the Premier League, the God of Anfield’s demise was official.
What happened next at Leeds is a whole other story, and a far greater downfall.
