James Milner turns 40 on Sunday, and the former Liverpool midfielder will surely soon be a Premier League record breaker
James Milner turns 40 on Sunday
James Milner turns 40 on Sunday(Image: PA)
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When James Milner walked through the doors of Melwood for the first time he knew exactly what he was there for. But he didn’t really get it.
“I want to play football and play more centrally if I can – and that’s where the manager said he sees me playing,” said Liverpool’s new signing after completing his free transfer move from Manchester City in July 2015.
Over a decade on, and now entering his 40s, the idea of pigeonholing Milner as ‘just’ a central player seems laughable. He’s the James of all trades who has cultivated a storied, and surely soon to be record-breaking career.
Because when Milner, who turns the big 4-0 on Sunday, came on in the 80th minute of Brighton’s 2-0 win over Burnley on Saturday - and yes, in central midfield - he was making his 649th Premier League appearance, placing him just four games away from Gareth Barry’s record of 653.
Currently used in a ‘finisher’ role by Fabian Hurzeler, the Seagulls boss who is over seven years his junior, Milner is seeing out his career by playing in the area of the pitch he had envisioned for himself in his prime, but the truth is that he wouldn’t have been half the player he has been if he’d played there all the time.
“That’s a big thing for me [playing centrally] coming to the later stages of my career,” he had continued back when he was being unveiled by Liverpool.
“I want to play as much football as I can. When I’m sat at 45 and retired, I want to look back and see what I’ve done and that I’ve played games, rather than having come to the end of my career and tailed off.”
In fairness it wasn’t exactly Milner’s fault that he didn’t end up getting what he wanted back then, namely a regular starting berth in the centre of a Liverpool side entering a post-Steven Gerrard reality.
When he signed for Liverpool Milner had just come off the back of a season which had started with him playing right-back for England in a pre-World Cup friendly against Ecuador. Then by January 2015 he was starting upfront for Manchester City during a winter striker crisis, scoring a brace against Sheffield Wednesday in the FA Cup third round on his 29th birthday.
Yet manager Brendan Rodgers thought he could end the days of Milner’s versatility and install him as one of his side’s most dependable central midfielders, adding steel to a Reds side that had floundered badly the previous season after the giddy highs of the 2013/14 title challenge, with the following campaign ending in an ignominious 6-1 defeat at Stoke City.
When 2015/16 started back at Stoke three months later it did so with Milner in the centre of midfield, his display described as the “obvious success” of a 1-0 victory as per the Daily Mirror’s match report.
Yet just 10 games later, only two of which were won, Rodgers was gone. Sacked ruthlessly following a 1-1 draw with Everton at Goodison Park.
With Jordan Henderson injured, Milner had captained Liverpool in that derby, and he would go on to be Jurgen Klopp’s first Reds skipper for the goalless draw at Tottenham Hotspur two weeks later.
Typically, his 13.1km covered and 82 sprints were the highest in the Liverpool side on an afternoon when the work they did off the ball was scrutinised much more than what they did on it.
And so began Milner’s association with Klopp, a union which did start with him playing centrally but would soon evolve.
He began the League Cup final against former club Manchester City on the right of midfield four months into the German’s reign, before he was moved to left-back at the beginning of the following season in what was initially seen as a temporary measure. He ended up playing there for the whole campaign, rarely putting a foot wrong.
And that season would set the tone for his Liverpool career, one which ended in 2023 with 332 appearances for the club, 230 of which coming in the Premier League to make up a decent chunk of his hugely impressive total.
Milner’s versatility and energy would mark him out as the perfect squad member for Klopp, who memorably turned to him in midfield (when he’d played the second half of the semi-final comeback against Barcelona at left-back) after an hour of the Champions League final against Tottenham in Madrid in 2019 because he wanted him on the pitch for the closing moments of a tight game.
When the full-time whistle went Milner ran to the end housing Reds fans holding six fingers aloft to signify the amount of European Cups the club now possessed.
A year later a 19th top-flight title would follow, with home and away penalties against Leicester and a superb goalline clearance against Bournemouth two of his individual highlights, not that he’d ever say it was about him.
“It’s the fans’ club,” Milner would say when he left some three years later. “We are lucky enough to rent a shirt for a few years and do what we can in that shirt, but it’s their club and everything we do is for them.”
And Milner, now into his forties, did more than most.