Rickie Lambert has admitted that he ‘said no immediately’ when the chance to swap boyhood club Liverpool for Crystal Palace emerged during his ill-fated spell at Anfield, while speaking to Bristol Live.
While it is fair to say a late-blooming centre-forward didn’t exactly set the world alight on Merseyside, who can blame him for letting his heart rule his head?
Lambert always had Liverpool red running through his veins and the chance to seal a dream move at the age of 32, with time running out in his top-flight career, was understandably too good to turn down.
The dream quickly became something closer to a nightmare, however, with Brendan Rodgers preferring to put his faith in Daniel Sturridge and the ever-infuriating Mario Balotelli.
Yet Lambert, an England international at the time, still had no interest in cutting his spell at Liverpool short when Crystal Palace came calling.
“Pretty early on Rodgers tried to get rid of me to Crystal Palace where (former Southampton manager) Alan Pardew was,” explains the 11-time England international.
“I said no immediately. Why would I leave a club like Southampton for years to come to Liverpool and leave after several weeks to go to Palace?
“After that I was in shock, and I didn’t get selected for about three months I think. I didn’t come off the bench, I didn’t touch a ball the whole time.
“But it was amazing to join an amazing club, and despite all that Rodgers was actually a brilliant manager, so it was all set up for me to succeed, but I was devastated not to be able to maximise my stay.”
The now-retired Lambert would eventually wind down his career with West Brom and Cardiff, although he will go down in history for his remarkable exploits at St Mary’s.
With 117 strikes in just 235 games, the Southampton legend not only fired the Saints into the Premier League – he scored the goals to keep them there.
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