When the weekend rolls around and you’re planning to settle down for the live football on Sky Sports, you know the pundits to expect with Graeme Souness being one of them. The no-nonsense Scotsman is renowned for his rants when he is analysing teams in the studio and it became a running joke when he used to constantly criticise Paul Pogba during his tenure at Manchester United.
While Souness is not likely going to hold the mantle of favourite pundit among watchers, away from his media duties he was once a great footballer and that is often lost on Sky’s younger audiences.
The Scotsman was an outstanding midfielder who enjoyed a glorious career in the 1980s - you should ask your parents about him. To Liverpool, he is a club legend and one of the greatest players in their history. To many of their loyal fans he makes up part of their all-time XI.
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He was a combative midfielder - aggressive when he needed to be but also had the ability to play football with grace. Souness was everything you could ever dream of in a midfield player. But before his glorious days on Merseyside his career had a rocky beginning.
After he couldn’t get his senior career up and running at Tottenham Hotspur, Souness moved to Middlesbrough in 1972 and in his early beginnings on Teesside he was given some tough love as he initially loved engaging in nightlife. Jack Charlton was named as Boro boss soon after Souness joined. He warned the player that he could go on to have a great career in the game or it could be cut short in a year’s time.
Those words stuck with him for six years until he began to veer off the rails again as he broke the club’s disciplinary code in 1978. This resulted in the player being suspended for a week before the club told him to head to Leeds for talks with another club.
Of course that club turned out to be Liverpool and a £352,000 deal was completed on this day 45 years ago. Little did Souness know he was about to begin the most glorious chapter of his career. Joining the reigning European champions, Souness knew he had to have his head screwed on and as a result he enjoyed great success at Anfield, winning five First Division titles and three European Cups.
Graeme Souness signed for the Reds #OnThisDay in 1978 🙌
He played a starring role in one of the most dominant Liverpool sides in the club’s history and his skill with the ball at his feet made him a firm fan favourite. Bob Paisley selected him to be the club captain from the 1981-82 campaign and Souness later admitted he had “no idea” why his former boss made that decision. However, it was a decision that proved to be an excellent judgement call down the line. Souness came across like a born leader when he was handed the armband, and it was that added responsibility that helped him to reach another level on the field, if that was even possible.
Souness shared the pitch with some Liverpool icons, including Kenny Dalglish and Ian Rush, and together they helped build an incredible legacy on the red side of the city, setting the pedigree for the players of the future to immortalise themselves as heroes of Anfield.
Michael Robinson, the striker who came off the bench in Liverpool’s 1894 European Cup triumph over Roma, held his former skipper in the highest of regards.
“Graeme was a great leader and was the best player I ever played with,” he once told LFCHistory.
Alan Hansen, another ex-teammate of Souness at Liverpool, once insisted that when it came to midfielders, “Graeme was the king.”
The term Rolls Royce midfielder gets thrown around a lot in football these days but Souness fully deserved the label because he was brilliant at everything in the middle of the park. A lot of people have always dreamt of what a midfield pairing would look like with the Scot alongside a more recent Liverpool legend in Steven Gerrard. And it is fair to say that it would be quite something to behold.
Gerrard was an incredible footballer who achieved a great deal of success at Anfield but it was nothing compared to the feats accomplished by his predecessor.
