Things don’t tend to go well for those who decide to jump ship at Jurgen Klopp’s Liverpool.
The last few years have been replete with tales of those players who have left Anfield only to fail to recapture their Liverpool form elsewhere.
One more to add to that list – and perhaps even sit at the top of it – is Jordan Henderson. The former Reds captain is a new Ajax player having signed for the Dutch giants yesterday.
Henderson’s move comes on the back of a bizarre six-month stint in Saudi Arabia with Al Ettifaq which saw him take a knife to his own reputation. And speaking to The Rest Is Football podcast today, pundit Micah Richards says he simply can’t understand why Henderson moved to Ettifaq in the first place.
“I can’t get my head around all of this now,” said the former Manchester City defender. “Surely as an agent, as people around him, they know what he’s going into and the backlash he could potentially receive. If you go there surely you just stick it out or don’t go at the very start anyway.
“He must have thought ‘the standard of football isn’t what I thought it would be, might not be able to settle’. It’s a very strange story why you would do that and then come back after six months. It doesn’t make sense to me.”
Henderson questioned over Saudi move
Richards won’t be the only one taking Henderson to task over his actions of the past six months. The 33-year-old can surely expect some serious questions whenever he’s next in-front of the press.
Whichever way you look at it, his £12m Liverpool exit of last summer was incredibly strange.
As he admitted back in September, Henderson had never expected or planned to leave Anfield after 12 years. He was seemingly planning for the new season as usual.
But when Klopp informed him that he would no longer be playing quite as much, things changed.
From there, it seems that Henderson had basically made his decision. It doesn’t feel like bridges have been burned as he’s reportedly still in touch with both players and staff at Liverpool. But there was seemingly no way back.
In some ways, it’s a very sad story. Henderson obviously didn’t enjoy his time at Al Ettifaq and appears to have basically been sold an impossible dream by Steven Gerrard.
Obviously, it’s on him that he decided to pretty much blow up his legacy at Liverpool in moving to Saudi Arabia, but it’s still sad nonetheless.
Thankfully, Henderson can now start to put it all behind him and rebuild at Ajax. It’s a great club and one which will be much more in-keeping with Hendo’s experience as a Liverpool player. Hopefully some day soon we’ll hear the former Reds’ captain’s thoughts on everything that went down. Until then, we’ll continue to scratch our heads.