Football Special Edition: Liverpool’s Best Strikers (Part 9)
(Continued from Part 8 of the article)
Ian Rush only used to play at regular intervals of time in the club and was infrequent due to Liverpool’s club policy of the time. The policy stated that the young talent plays in the reserves and come in every now and then so they gradually learn ‘the Liverpool way.’
For Ian Rush, the learning part was a hard part and not at all what could have been if he had been given full time opportunities, as the goals did not seem to flow at that time.
These actually brought things to the point that the young talent started to leave Liverpool, looking for other clubs where they would get more first team play time.
Ian Rush decided to stay at Anfield and fight for his place in the first team after being motivated by the manager Paisely.
Ian Rush’s first ever goal scored for Liverpool took some time to arrive and eventually came on the thirtieth of September 1981, during a European Cup first round second leg tie against Oulun Palloseura at Anfield.
Rush ended the season as the clubs top scorer, by scoring thirty goal in only forty nine appearances. When considering all the competitions then that makes a ratio of one goal scored every 1.6 games player and seventeen of these goals came in the League games and Rush played a vital part in Liverpool regaining the League Championship from Aston Villa.
The title achievement was even more impressive due to the fact that Liverpool had entered in tenth place in 1982, with clubs like Swansea City and Manchester United leading the title race and then it all turned around and Liverpool saw the League trophy return to them after just two years.
Ian Rush also scored a goal that helped ‘The Reds’ win the 1982 Football league Cup final against Tottenham Hotspurs.
Rush was voted as the PFA Young Player Of The Year in 1983 and he led Liverpool into another First Division and league cup double, but the Liverpool did not manage to win these titles.
Rush scored twenty four League goals and Liverpool finished eleven points over their runner up Watford and almost uncontested in the race for the title during the later part of the season.
On sixth of November 1982 in a match against Everton, Ian Rush scored four goals and gave Liverpool a five to nil victory.
The third successive achievement in the competition for the League Cup was added with a win over their bitter rivals, the ‘Red Devils’ with a score of two to one.
Ian Rush was voted PFA player of the year again and BBC Wales Sports personality of the year in 1984. Liverpool won the “treble” that season as they won the league, the league cup and the European cup.
Again it was not a surprise when Rush was added to the Football writers football of the year to the PFA award. This was the same achievement that his striker partner Dalgish had achieved only a year earlier.
Ian Rush also known as the ‘The Goal Scoring Machine’ scored forty seven goals in sixty five games and this made him the highest goal scorer in all professional competitions that season and also meant that he had a goal scoring average of 1.4 matches per goal.
In 1985 Dalgish and Rush proved just how lethal they can be when paired up, when playing against Everton in the FA Cup final as ‘The Reds’ came out victorious with a score of three to one and Rush became man of the match.
In 1992 Rush picked up his third FA Cup win and scored Liverpool’s second goal in the sixty seventh minute of the match to give them a two to nil victory over second division Sunderland.
In March 1995, Rush announced that he will be leaving Liverpool on a free transfer when his contract will expire and that would be on the first of June.
Ian Rush ended his Liverpool career in two spells, with a one year rough period in between at Juventus. Rush scored a hundred and thirty nine goals for Liverpool in a total of two hundred and twenty four appearances in a period of seven years. His second spell was from 1988 to 1996 and he made another two hundred and forty five appearances for the club and scored ninety goals for the club.
This makes the total to a whopping two hundred and twenty nine goals scored from four hundred and sixty nine appearances.
Ian Rush is tagged as the highest goal scorer that Liverpool has ever seen and is truly remembered as a ‘Red Legend.’
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