Liverpool striker made ‘stupid mistake’ at start of pre-season that ruined dream transfer on very first day

As you’re reading this article, there’s every chance that you would absolutely love to play for Liverpool.

But relatively few people get to play football professionally at all, never mind for the team who they have supported for all their life. Still, it’d be a dream if it ever happened, wouldn’t it?

It might feel that way at first, but there are no guarantees that it would work out, and if the club in question happens to represent your home town too, the pressure to succeed would only increase further.

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This is how it worked out for Rickie Lambert, who joined Liverpool eight years ago today and ended up spending only one season with the club.

In what became thought of as the summer of Southampton, Lambert was the first of the trio of Saints players who signed for the Reds in 2014.

While he might have seemed an unusual striker for the club to have bought, particularly in the transfer window in which they lost Luis Suarez to Barcelona, the England international had proven his Premier League pedigree over the previous two seasons.

It’s reasonably rare for a player to hit double figures for both goals and assists in a single campaign in England’s top flight – it has only occurred less than 40 times in the last 12 years.

If you exclude penalties for the sake of argument, then the number of men who have reached the benchmark obviously drops lower, and in 2013/14 there were just three: Suarez, Wayne Rooney and Lambert.

However, if the latter’s time at Liverpool proved anything, it’s the importance of utilising a new player properly and allowing them to play to their strengths.

It isn’t as simple as plugging them into their usual spot in the same formation either. When Brendan Rodgers did start Lambert (which only happened 12 times) it was usually as the front man in a 4-2-3-1 set up, just as he’d been at Southampton. The issue was with what the Reds’ manager asked him to do from there.

Lambert was the master of a through ball, those passes which slice between the opposition’s defensive back line and allow a teammate a clean run in on goal.

In 2012/13, the Southampton man had played 68 through balls, the most of any player in the Premier League, and they had in part helped him to create 12 clear-cut chances, the joint-ninth most that season.

While his numbers dropped on the through ball front in his final year on the south coast – though he was still sixth in the standings – his clear-cut chance tally went up by one and only Suarez laid on more golden opportunities for teammates that term.

But Liverpool had another through ball master in the form of Philippe Coutinho, and it was he who played them most frequently for Liverpool in 2014/15.

Compared to his time with the Saints, Lambert touched the ball less overall but slightly more often in the box and it just did not work for him. He didn’t play a single through ball either – from top of the pile two seasons earlier to rock bottom with the Reds.

And it didn’t help him in chasing those Coutinho passes that he was not by his own admission fit enough, thanks to an error he made in the summer of 2014.

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Lambert has since revealed he was so keen to make a positive impression with his new club that he joined up with pre-season training three weeks earlier than they told him he should have. But at what cost?

“My first pre-season, this is one of the biggest mistakes I ever made,” he told the Straight From the Off podcast.

“[Brendan] Rodgers gave me, Stevie [Gerrard] and the lads at England, I think it was five weeks off, so we would come back a lot later than everyone else.

“But I went on holiday with the missus and kids, and then I went back, because I wanted to be in the best shape possible playing for Liverpool.

“So I literally had two weeks off and then came back with the first group at Liverpool. And that was a massive mistake.

“Pretty early on I was thinking ‘f***ing hell’. I could feel it in my legs. I needed the break. It was a stupid mistake.

“I was 32 as well. The year before at Southampton I could start to feel a slight difference, my little yard of pace. Then at Liverpool I just felt leggy, I just didn’t have the energy and the attitude that I was in.”

Perhaps had he been used correctly his fitness issues would not have mattered so much, but we will never know.

What is certain is that, as it stands, Lambert was the last local lad whom Liverpool signed. Despite the way his year with his boyhood club unfolded, there’s no doubt the next Scouser given the opportunity to move to the Reds will jump at the chance.

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