'Why've we signed him?' - Steven Gerrard had X-rated row with agent after Liverpool transfer

Below is a summary of the full article. Click here for the full version from Echo or go back to LFC Live.

“I said, ‘Gary McAllister?! He’s 35, isn’t he?’ He said, ‘yeah’, and I went, ‘do you think that’s sending out the wrong message?’“We were trying to build up a very young team and get rid of a few of the older players, so I feared it was sending out the wrong message to the fans.“He said, ‘Look, Phil.

Gary wants to come and play and wants to make sure that he’s in the team.’“I said to Gerard, ‘okay, I’ll bow down to your better knowledge.’ How f*****g wrong was I?'”McAllister was well aware of the public mood about his arrival at the time and was determined to make his critics eat their words.“To be fair, one of the main inspirations was one of the fanzines,” said McAllister, who turns 61 today, on Christmas Day. Willing to sign whatever deal was put in front of him, he ended up pocketing a pay rise.“The biggest fear I had prior to signing was my agent Struan (Marshall), who fortunately looked after Steven (Gerrard), Carra (Jamie Carragher), and Emile Heskey,” he said.“He had a few players at Liverpool and my fear was Struan, bearing in mind I went to Coventry purely for money, 100%.

Looking back over his career as a whole, he was even better placed to consider McAllister’s arrival as a decisive ‘masterstroke’ for his own progress.“I think the decision to sign Gary, where I was at in my career, was a masterstroke,” Gerrard said. This included a man-of-the-match performance against Alaves in the UEFA Cup final, where he scored one and set up two, including the winning golden goal, in the 5-4 win to lift the trophy.Meanwhile, he'd also net vital strikes against the likes of Everton, Barcelona, and Tottenham Hotspur during the final weeks of the season, scoring in five spring matches in a row, as the Reds completed the treble and also qualified for the Champions League for the first time.Looking back, McAllister revealed he felt confident pretty early on in his Liverpool career that Houllier had built a side that would soon deliver trophies.“The coaching team and the manager, I just felt there was an environment growing where we could win something,” he said.