Curtis Jones sale means Liverpool have lost ‘Scouse heartbeat’ for first time in 134 years – here’s why it’s happened, why the timing couldn’t be worse and how Everton have played a part

There was a heart-deadening moment last season for the player whom Steven Gerrard once declared could become the ‘Scouse heartbeat’ of the Liverpool team.

Curtis Jones had just put in a strong performance in the fourth round of the FA Cup against Brighton, ghosting in to score a technically excellent goal, and you could see from the look in his eyes what it meant to him. Then Arne Slot was asked about Jones’ future prospects in the post-match press conference and warned that he was up against ‘many good players’ in the squad. 

It still looked as if the Toxteth-born player had a mountain to climb.

So Jones is going to Inter Milan, bringing the curtain down on 134 consecutive years of the club always having at least one Liverpool-born player in the first-team squad. 

The 25-year-old said six years ago that it would be ‘unbelievable’ if the Kop’s chant about a player being ‘the Scouser in our team’ – sung for Trent Alexander-Arnold – were ever directed at him. It won’t happen now. He also reflected that it was ‘important’ for the squad to have a ‘Scouse heartbeat’. There is not one, now.

This unbroken Scouse bloodline extends back through the careers of Gerrard, Jamie Carragher, Robbie Fowler and Steve McManaman in contemporary times. In the great Bob Paisley era, there was Phil Thompson and Sammy Lee, to name just two. 

Jones, 25, was born in Toxteth and has been with Liverpool since he was a kid

The legendary Bill Shankly had Ian Callaghan, Chris Lawler and Gerry Byrne and many more. Ian St John, one of Shankly’s lieutenants and captains, once said that Shankly’s team-building philosophy was built on a core mix of ‘Scousers and Jocks’.

Don’t let it be said that either of those two great managers would have contemplated, for one moment, fielding a Scouser whom they deemed fractionally less likely to secure a win for them than someone else. 

Paisley was brutal in the way he replaced Thompson with Graeme Souness as captain after a poor run of results around Christmas 1981. Shankly and Paisley made it a meritocracy because a deep and visceral hatred of losing was seared across their souls.

Those who later stepped into their shoes perhaps saw the symbolism and good optics of Liverpool-born players even more. Brendan Rodgers described hearing Shankly talking about their value on the tapes of the great man speaking which he played in his car. Jurgen Klopp said he would love a ‘team of Scousers’ and eulogised about ‘Scouse soul’.

But the club’s Kirkby academy simply hasn’t been able to maintain the supply of local players in a development system which, like every other, has an increasingly international dimension.

This is not a new development and to some degree it’s cyclical. Carragher discussed the lack of local players following himself and Gerrard through in an interview 21 years ago and there have been some poignant landmarks. Liverpool fielded a player born in the Liverpool region in every Merseyside derby since 1986 – 69 consecutive meetings – until the 2015 fixture.

With players now scouted from across the planet, it is easier to lose those locals who don’t present the promise at the age of 11 which is evident at the age of 18. Anthony Gordon, who was born in Liverpool and a boyhood Red, spent time on the club’s books before Everton snapped him up at the age of 11. 

Jamie Carragher and his fellow Scouser Steven Gerrard lift the Champions League trophy for Liverpool in 2005 in Istanbul. But the club will have no homegrown players this season

Trent Alexander-Arnold is another local lad who has left the club in recent years

Everton have been better recruiters of local talent down the decades, arguably helped in more recent years by less pressure and less global scrutiny.

Gordon was back on Liverpool’s radar when Newcastle were ready to sell him, two years ago, as they attempted to comply with PSR. Jarell Quansah was part of a package discussed but Liverpool, who have since sold the centre-half to Bayer Leverkusen, did not want to lose him at that time. How they could have used his presence now.

Managers have craved having a Scouser in the team because they know the value of an individual who can articulate to team-mates, with real authenticity, the expectation, the derby, the history, the peculiarities of the support and the intensity with which the club is scrutinised. A Liverpool-born player requires no explanation.

As one fan posted on social media about Jones’ departure: ‘Best way to kill a club’s identity is to sell all homegrown players for pennies and overspend on unproven foreign players. So stupid.’

Carragher always insisted that Djibril Cisse exaggerated a story of Gerrard using the city as a source of inspiration at half-time during the 2005 Champions League final in Istanbul, but the captain would certainly have spoken from the heart more than anyone on that monumental night.

The timing of this break with history is also unfortunate. Jones leaves at precisely the time that Liverpool seem that much further removed from their roots, with the sale of a third of the club to an investor consortium headed by Jeff Bezos. 

Former Liverpool boss Jurgen Klopp said he would love a ‘team of Scousers’ and eulogised about ‘Scouse soul’

Anthony Gordon, who was born in Liverpool and a boyhood Red, spent time on the club’s books before Everton snapped him up at the age of 11. He has now moved on to Barcelona

American ownership these past 16 years has seemed a little closer to home than it might, given that FSG is based in Boston, Massachusetts, a city with distinct Irish and Liverpool links. Many Liverpool-based supporters feel the consortium’s introduction takes the club that little bit further from them.

There is always an emotional dimension when it comes to city of Liverpool and its football. It’s precisely why Shankly said that the game transcended considerations of life and death. So this is unmistakably a sad day for the place. 

Carragher, just like the great men who have managed his beloved club, craves titles and trophies above anything, but it was he who has captured the value of Scousers in the team better than anyone. 

‘They will have more of an emotional attachment,’ he said in an interview some years back. ‘It’ll hurt them more when they lose. When they’re playing, they’ll want it more. It’s only small margins, but local players would be more loyal to the club.’