from koptalk
November 1998, Liverpool football club gained a player by signing Cameroon captain Rigobert Song from Salernitana but little did most of us know that in the same week we almost lost a player as well.
The player in question was Robert Bernard Fowler, or "God" to the Anfield faithful, who was on the verge of leaving (some would even say at some stage determined to leave) for another club.
This in itself would have shaken the club to its very foundations at the time especially considering the club he wanted to join. Had he succeeded in joining them it could possibly have put an end to Gerard Houllier's reign as Liverpool manager - remember Gerard was at that time nowhere near as bullet-proof as he is now.
The club in question was of course Manchester United. Ferguson thought he had his man, and if it wasn't for the iron will of both Gerard Houllier and
David Moores he would have, as Ferguson was ready to smash the British transfer record at the time for Fowler. Things had even gone so far as Ferguson paying visits to the home of Fowler in an effort to unsettle him, in which he very nearly succeeded. It took the biggest contract in the history of English football (bigger than Keane's much vaunted package at the time) and a vice-captaincy to get the "Toxteth Terror" to stay. Fowler signed his contract on the same day as Song.
But ultimately as time told, this wasn't good enough for Fowler. He couldn't take not being the main man about Anfield; there was a new kid in town.
Even the absolute adoration and worship of the Kop, in which he was (some would say shamefully) more appreciated than the player who would become European Player of the Year, was not enough to stop him leaving the club that had made him into a star.
So after two years of injuries, weight problems and sulking Robbie Fowler asked his friends in the world of journalism to start approaching clubs to see if they might be interested in acquiring the services of a player who had the talent and ability to become the greatest player of his generation but who ultimately wasted it at Liverpool. And so it came to be that one sad morning last November the player who was born to wear the number 9 for Liverpool left to wear the number 27 at Leeds.
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