Peter Crouch had to wait to get on the pitch against a team of Chelsea legends at Anfield on Saturday, but he made an almost-instant impact after emerging from the substitutes’ bench at halftime.
The ball was sent in from the right wing by Florent Sinama Pongolle and Crouch beat his marker to the ball, guiding a lofted header into the top corner to break the deadlock in an encounter that Steven Gerrard clearly wanted to win.
The 44-year-old was mobbed by his teammates in front of the Kop but managed to free his arms for long enough to produce his trademark robot celebration.
Crouch’s afternoon went from good to great a few minutes later when he doubled Liverpool‘s lead with an impudent dink that went sailed over the Chelsea goalkeeper’s head and into the back of the net.
There was no robot celebration after the second goal but Crouch did embrace Sir Kenny Dalglish, John Barnes, John Aldridge and Ian Rush ahead of the restart.
Ahead of the game, Crouch gave his view on Liverpool’s first season under new head coach Arne Slot. “I think it has been an unbelievably successful season, one week of football doesn’t determine… yeah, of course it has not been a great week.
“Paris Saint-Germain, I think over the course of the two legs even the staunchest Liverpool fan would say they probably deserved it. I was at the Carabao Cup final and it wasn’t the Liverpool we have seen this season.
“But if you go back to the start of the season and said you’d have a lead like this and be out of the other competitions, every Liverpool fan would have bitten your arm off. And that’s where they are now and I think we need to take stock of that.
“After Jürgen [Klopp] left, the fact that Arne Slot has come in and done what he has done has just been a revelation. Everyone just needs to be a bit calm about it and look at it in the positive way it should be.”
