Top five Liverpool players to have donned the number 9 jersey

3. Ian Rush

Ian Rush holds the club record of 346 goals in 660 appearances, a record that will take some doing to be broken. His goal-poaching skills made him feared all over Europe and were instrumental in making Liverpool the dominant team in the 1980s.

A lesser-known fact is that Rush’s start to his illustrious career at Liverpool was far from ideal. Signed for a British transfer record for a teenager – £300,000 from Chester in 1980 – Rush didn’t feel settled at the club and it took him nine games to score his first goal. He even requested for a transfer which was rejected by the manager Bob Paisley, who probably knew that the player was destined for big things. Rush eventually managed to establish himself in the team in the 1981-82 season and scored 30 goals to announce that he’d finally arrived on the big stage and didn’t look back after that.

Rush was often called the first line in Liverpool’s defence because, apart from scoring bucketloads of goals, he was also a tireless chaser of the ball. For all his goals and the contribution, Rush is one of the all-time fan favourites at the club, and can be still seen attending Liverpool’s matches and promoting the club in his ambassadorial role.