SIDELINE CUT: If Liverpool lose Steven Gerrard, then the Anfield club loses more than its most electrifying ball player, it loses something of its soul

TODAY MUST be about as grim as it gets for the footballers that presently make up Liverpool football club: a short bus trip to Stoke City and no glories to play for this season. Do football players still play cards on road trips or is it every man to his iPod nowadays? Motorists travelling up the M6 early this morning might just spot the pensive expression of Steven Gerrard staring out of the rain-streaked window of the Liverpool team bus – if he is even travelling to the game. In the best of times, Gerrard bears the look of a worried school kid who has forgotten to finish his maths.

That creased brow under the trademark spiked haircut has become as much an Anfield emblem as the Liver bird. This season – 2009-2010 – had been billed as the year when Liverpool FC would push on for their long awaited coronation and their first title in 20 years.

Instead, for the last hero on Merseyside, the season has brought him into territory the realms of an English winter and a football matrix he cannot recognise: where his own defiant powers have paled, where Liverpool have become an irrelevance in the narrative of the Premier season – just another mediocre club – and where there is a growing chasm between the American owners of the club and the tens of thousands of Scousers who rely upon Anfield as a chief expression of their identity. The sporting life is different.

Practitioners do not have the usual three or four decades of grafting or fine-tuning a so-called career. They have 10 to 15 years at best. Gerrard must regard this season as just as big a waste as though he were sitting at home with a cast on recuperating from a long-term injury. The one saving grace is the thought of leading the charge for Fabio Capello and England in the World Cup this summer and he must be privately worried that the sheer drudge of playing for Liverpool could affect his international form.

But the most burning question in his mind must be this: for how long more can he continue with Liverpool? I have no idea why I “like” Stevie G. I have never met the lad; more than likely never will and if I did probably wouldn’t have much to say to him. Taking illogical likes to some athletes and equally capricious dislikes to others is part of the contrary attraction of sport. It isn’t just the football, although the goals he scores tend to be spectacular and he is among the most energetic and athletic footballers in the Premier League.

Years ago, a friend told me he was on a plane leaving Liverpool when Gerrard, then the hot new commodity on Merseyside, strolled in carrying his stuff in a Tesco bag.

More recently, other friends of mine, a couple, were holidaying some place and saw someone who looked remarkably like Stevie G across the pool. When my friend heard the Scouse voice, he knew it was Stevie G. That evening, the couple were in a clothes store and while she went to try something on, he casually told the guy in the store that he had seen Steven Gerrard in town.

The store attendant was very excited by this. And then, to their mutual disbelief, Stevie G went strolling past the shop window. Within seconds, the guy in the store had stopped Gerrard and persuaded him to step inside for a photograph. He disappeared to find his camera and so for a few seconds, my friend was standing alone with Stevie G in a clothing store in the Algarve.

Then, his wife came out holding whatever garment she had been trying on, saw her man standing with who she presumed to be the store attendant, marched straight up to Stevie G and asked for a different size. Gerrard didn’t bat an eyelid.

“Sorry luv, I don’t work here,” he said.

After that, it was hard to countenance a bad word about Gerrard. A few years ago, a film crew followed him around for a television documentary that contained many priceless moments. The best is probably when Gerrard gives a Cribs-style tour of the Buckinghamshire McMansion he shares with his family. Referring to the momentous night in Istanbul, he took the cameras into a special room containing cabinets with football jerseys hanging on revolving mannequins.

“It’s just showing off, really,” he said sheepishly as we watched the shirts spinning under spotlights.

Then he bent down and said, “ I’ll just switch this off. Save on the “lecce”.”

You could argue that all the above is just trivia and irrelevant but those yarns also explain why Gerrard is so wrapped up in Liverpool and Liverpool in him. For all the wealth and the inevitable Premier lifestyle, he cannot escape his own lack of pretension. When Gerrard went to return the Champions League trophy to the Uefa suits in Paris, he brought “Gratty”, his “bezza” with him.

Gerrard grew up in the old coal mining area of Whiston in the 1980s, a decade when many Liverpudlians would not have been strangers to the idea of saving on the “lecce”.

His cousin John Paul Gilhooley died at age 10 in the Hillsborough disaster, when Gerrard was nine, a tragedy he has acknowledged affected him deeply. Gerrard has his limitations as a footballer but when he is in full stride, he is worth the admission price and through the seasons, he has made it appear as though he was literally born to play for Liverpool.

After the miraculous events in Istanbul, it seemed as if the pressure was off Gerrard: he had delivered on Liverpool’s peerless European tradition in a manner that instantly elevated him to the ranks of Anfield immortals. But the incandescence of that evening has begun to fade.

Liverpool the franchise is a mess.

The anticipated leaving of Anfield for a spanking new modern ground in Stanley Park has continually been pushed back. The emotional gulf between the American owners and the people has been unforgettably summed up in the missive delivered by Tom Hicks Jnr to a fan who wrote to air his grievances: “Blow Me, F*** Face.” It was hardly spun from the Shankly tread of wit. The club is stuck with the idiosyncrasies of Rafa Benitez because buying him out of his contract will prove too costly. They are out of all worthwhile competitions this year. And the team is haunted with injuries, particularly the mercurial Fernando Torres.

It is hard to understand how a team that came within a few games of winning the title last year, who humiliated Manchester United at the vital part of the season and who tore Real Madrid apart could just disintegrate as they have done in the last few months.

The manner of the FA Cup defeat against Reading was the final straw for many of the most patient of Reds fans and it makes them genuinely fearful for what could happen in the months ahead.

But although the grand expectations for this season have been ended, it remains the most important year the club have faced in decades. If the team’s slump continues, then the last tangible ambition of reclaiming their spot in the top four and Champions League qualification will soon disappear.

And if that happens, then Gerrard, 30 years old this year, will have to think hard about the remaining years of his football life. It would be irresponsible of him not to seriously consider leaving. Inter Milan are among the clubs preparing to bid for him. Injured for the coming weeks and subdued in form anyway, it is down to his much maligned supporting cast to rescue the lost cause the season has become.

It is up to the others now to fight it out, starting in today’s drear clash in Stoke. For if Liverpool finally loses Gerrard, then the club loses more than its most electrifying ball player, it loses something of its soul. Without Gerrard, Liverpool will be truly and irredeemably lost.