While last season was a very good season for Jordan Henderson as an individual, the new Liverpool captain will have been very disappointed with his side's sixth place finish having come so close to the league title the year before.
There were a number of very disappointing results for the red half of Merseyside last season, such as losing both home and away to Manchester United, and being badly beaten by Arsenal at the Emirates, but neither of those games bothers Henderson as much as one game which he has admitted still haunts him to this day, a 6-1 away defeat to Stoke City:
It will be a day that many of us will never forget. The way we played, the result, the goals we conceded, everything, it went from bad to worse.
At half-time in the dressing room, a few of us tried to say some things to get everyone going and get something back. But then full-time came and it was awful. It was a sickening feeling, really. It was embarrassing to go there as a Liverpool player and get beaten like that.
It truly was a horror show for the Reds, and Henderson continued to explain that the players were so gutted about what had happened that they didn't want to go to the club's player of the year award ceremony which was held later the same night:
A lot of us didn’t want to go to be honest. It had been organised for a number of months and it was especially for Stevie.
He has been such a huge role model for everyone who has been here and we’d wanted to make sure that we said goodbye to him properly off the field on a more personal level for him. If it was just a holiday, we wouldn’t have gone. That is natural when that happens. It stays with you but then there comes a point when you have to move on.
I won’t forget that day in a hurry. That game will stick in my mind for a long time.
At least that makes the team talk for both games against Stoke this season fairly straight forward for Henderson, who took over the captain's armband when Steven Gerrard departed for LA.
via The Guardian.
