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Liverpool skipper Steven Gerrard was asked to name his all-time Reds XI from during his time at the club ahead of the Anfield outfit’s clash against Chelsea.
It has been 16 years since Gerrard first donned the first-team jersey for his boyhood club, and so had several generations of Merseyside legends to choose from. Unsurprisingly, only two from the current crop of Liverpool players have made it to Gerrard’s team, one of whom is Gerrard himself – the man had no option but to pick himself.
The Gerrard XI team line up in an attacking 4-3-3 formation.
The Squad
Goalkeeper: Pepe Reina; Defenders: Glen Johnson, Jamie Carragher, Sami Hyypia, John Arne Riise; Midfielders: Xabi Alonso, Javier Mascherano, Steven Gerrard; Strikers: Robbie Fowler, Fernando Torres, Luis Suarez.
At goal, Gerrard has picked Pepe Reina, with whom he played from 2005 till last season, after which he was offloaded to Bayern Munich.
The defence line consists of Sami Hyppia(from whom Gerrard took the captain’s armband in 2003), past greats Jamie Carragher and John Arne Riise, and the current Liverpool right-back Glen Johnson.
Javier Mascherano is the defensive midfielder in the team, and there are two supreme passers of the ball playing off him – Steven Gerrard and Xabi Alonso – the orchestrators of the Istanbul comeback in 2005 – decidedly Liverpool’s finest hour in recent history.
Luis Suarez, Fernando Torres and the retired Robbie Fowler are the strikers in the team. The name of Michael Owen is conspicuously absent from the list.
