Liverpool completed the signing of 20-year-old Jordan Henderson from Sunderland on this day in 2011.
The midfielder’s arrival in a £20million deal was not unanimously well received with the club being criticised for spending a large amount of money on a player who had won just one England cap.
Henderson faced competition for a place from Steven Gerrard, Lucas Leiva, Raul Meireles and Christian Poulsen after arriving at Anfield.
The player said he was keen to learn from Gerrard, the man he would later replace as captain.
“I’ve trained with Steven once for England and he was unbelievable. Steven has been a massive, massive player for Liverpool for years now and he still is. Hopefully I can learn a lot from him,” he said.
Henderson was signed by Damien Comolli, who was employed as Liverpool’s director of football in a short-term experiment by new owners Fenway Sports Group, who said the new addition was “everything we wanted in a midfielder”.
Comolli later blamed the signing for his departure a year later, saying: “The day I got sacked they (Liverpool’s owners) told me I had made a big mistake on Jordan and he was a waste of money.”
After almost leaving the club in 2012 as a proposed makeweight in a failed deal for Fulham’s Clint Dempsey, Henderson – who has made 392 appearances for Liverpool and won 59 caps for England – went on to inherit the armband from Gerrard.
He has lifted the Champions League and Premier League trophies as captain as well the UEFA Super Cup and FIFA Club World Cup, in addition to becoming one of the Premier League’s most influential players on and off the pitch.
