'He virtually won two cup finals on his own'
The sight of Steve McManaman jinking and speeding his way past defenders left, right and centre is surely one of the defining images of the 1990s for any Liverpool fan.
“I don’t think people realise how good he was. For me, he’s probably the best player I played with and I played with some unbelievable ones,” Robbie Fowler, McManaman’s close friend and former teammate, says in the latest episode of ‘Premier League Heroes’.
McManaman seemed destined for greatness as soon as he graduated from the Academy to the Reds’ first team.
And across 51 appearances as a 19-year-old in his first full season in the senior ranks - a campaign he crowned with a Man-of-the-Match display in the 1992 FA Cup final - he announced himself as an Anfield star.
Free clip: Watch a trailer of 'Premier League Heroes'
By the time he left for Real Madrid in 1999, McManaman had racked up 364 games and 66 goals for his hometown club - plus another virtuoso and match-winning Wembley performance in the 1995 League Cup final.
In the words of Jamie Carragher: “He virtually won two cup finals on his own.”
Watch ‘Premier League Heroes’ on LFCTV at 7pm BST this evening.
The show will also be available on demand on LFCTV GO, where you can catch up on the first four episodes of the series, which focus on the Liverpool careers of Steven Gerrard, Carragher, Fowler and Michael Owen.
Three more instalments of ‘Premier League Heroes’ - on Sami Hyypia, Fernando Torres and Luis Suarez - will be aired over the coming weeks.