Remembering Steven Gerrard’s Fateful First Career Red Card

Autumn has fast descended on Merseyside, and rust-coloured leaves sweep through the half deserted streets. Everything is shrouded in uncanny quiet, with homes, parks and the usual evening gathering places seemingly abandoned by all but a few. From Wavertree to Kirkdale, Toxteth to Walton, Liverpool seems to have been emptied of its residents. Then, on the breeze, comes a low rumble, which rises up to a howling roar as one sidles up to Anfield's towering stands.

It is injury time of the Merseyside derby, and the home team are trailing 1-0 to their fierce rivals. Both sides are already down to 10 men, with Sander Westerveld and Francis Jeffers sent off for a petulant scuffle a few minutes before. The Liverpool fans are roaring their side on, desperate not to cede three home points to Everton for the first time since the autumn of 1995. Then, in a flash, the match is decided, and much of the back-page headlines are written. In only his second ever appearance against Everton, a young Steven Gerrard steams in with a thigh-high lunge on Kevin Campbell. He is quickly and inevitably shown a straight red card.

Gerrard's lunge comes shortly after the 2m30 mark.

This was the first sending off of Gerrard's career, and it set a precedent for much of what was to come. It was an incident which defined his early life as a Liverpool player and, as the memory grew dimmer and the pain of defeat duller, one which endeared him even more to the fans in the perverse way that only an overenthusiastic red-card challenge can. On one level, Gerrard would never lose that streak of indiscipline, receiving his marching orders another seven times over the course of his time at Liverpool – more often than any of his teammates in the same period. In one of his final games at the club, it took only 38 seconds for him to depart after a needless stamp on Ander Herrera. Manchester United went on to win 2-1 but, again, with time, that has probably bred an even greater sense of affection for Stevie G, not least because he could probably have gone several seconds earlier for a thumping follow through on Juan Mata.

When Gerrard wasn't making it his mission to brutalise people on derby day, he made sure to put in some winning performances while reigning in most other disciplinary excesses. The match in which he received his first red is the last one which Everton won away during his time at Liverpool; the Goodison outfit still haven't claimed victory at Anfield since that triumphant day in September 1999. Much of Liverpool's derby success over the next decade and a half was down to Gerrard, who throughout his career showed the consistent ability to step up his play in the most meaningful of matches. He scored 10 career goals against Everton, second only to the 13 he nabbed against Aston Villa. Third on his list of most-scored against clubs is, of course, the inimical Manchester United, against whom he netted on nine occasions all told.

If that first red card taught Gerrard anything, then, it was how to turn his aggression in the derby into something other than an inevitable dismissal. It inspired him to the epiphany that, while the fans might come to savour a thunderous moment of foul play eventually, their appreciation is far greater when one's game is defined by a rollicking performance, decisive intervention or whistling, long-range, game-changing goal. That's not to say that he was always successful in taming his competitive spirit in the derby; six years after his first red against Everton, he was sent off once again for slicing through Kevin Kilbane at Anfield. Liverpool managed to win that match without him, and he managed to limit himself to yellows for the remainder of his games against their Merseyside foes.

Though it came at the end of a painful loss, Gerrard's first red confirmed his status as a firm fan favourite, especially with the benefit of hindsight and knowledge of his constant heroics to come. The fire in his belly whenever Liverpool faced Everton was exactly what made him the people's choice for captain, in that he understood the significance of the local derby, and made manifest the sense of genuine rivalry that was felt so keenly in the stands. Gerrard was a fan as much as a footballer, and he did what any Liverpool supporter would do that fateful night at Anfield, namely skewer the nearest Everton player with the most rudimentary of studs-up challenges. Were roles reversed, an Everton fan would have done much the same. That's an aspect of the Merseyside derby which, with the decline in the numbers of young Scousers on the park, seems rather less prevalent in the modern day.

While aggression, commitment and a fierce love of Liverpool was what made Gerrard so beloved, however, that terrible tackle on Kevin Campbell also revealed his deepest flaw. Gerrard's career was epitomised in that clattering challenge, not only because it summed up his burning desire to impress the supporters, but also the fact that he was sometimes devoted to the point of detriment to himself. That is not to say that Gerrard was undone because he cherished Liverpool, merely that his personal investment was so deep and innate that it sometimes worked subliminally against him. That was most obviously the case after his notorious, disastrous slip against Chelsea, when he spent the rest of the game shooting from distance, desperately trying to atone for his error. That wasn't what the team needed, unfortunately. He was doing too much, trying too hard, and so his last chance of a league title slipped away.

Unfair as it is to define Gerrard's career by his failure to win the Premier League, it remains the glaring omission on a list of honours which ranges from domestic trophies to the ultimate European accolade. Indeed, his lack of a league title is only talked about because he managed to win everything else of note. That said, if there's one thing that Gerrard might regret in retirement, it's that his love of the club made it difficult to keep a cool head in that fateful moment, when he might have secured Premier League glory for Liverpool. So it was when he speared Kevin Campbell, having only wanted to make the fans proud.

@W_F_Magee