“He was, by some distance, the best central midfielder I ever played alongside. It was a disastrous decision to sell Alonso, and especially for just £30m – which looks a snip now when you reflect on all he has achieved subsequently, both at Real Madrid and Bayern Munich and with Spain, winning the Euros and the World Cup.
“I blame Rafa entirely for the loss of Alonso. He could still have been playing for Liverpool six or seven years after he left in 2009.”
He also gave his opinion on some of the worse signings that he saw in his near two decades in the Liverpool first team squad, saying that he studied all of the ‘staggering number’ of new boys closely to see if they’d be ‘a king or a prat’.
The likes of Alonso and now-Barcelona star Luis Suarez got the ‘king’ nod from Gerrard, but the former England skipper took a crack at El Hadji Diouf and one-season wonder Mario Balotelli.
“I had seen a staggering number of new signings walk into the Liverpool training ground. I watched every single one of their first training sessions with close attention, wondering whether we’d bought a star or another dud, a king or a prat, a Xabi Alonso or an El Hadji Diouf, a Luis Suarez or a Mario Balotelli.” /90min.com
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