“I’ll put Fairy on my knee because we don’t have gel in the ultrasound machine”

Neil Ruddock (55), former player of Premier League and on his day voted the 17th ‘worst footballer of all time’, he recalled on the ‘Talksport’ morning show how he was recovering from a knee injury during his time as a ‘red’ that player. Of course this is not something common but quite the opposite: very eccentric!

Ruddock, a former central defender for Southampton, Liverpool and West Ham among others, explains, as improbable as it seems, that in the early 1990s they didn’t have expert physiotherapists to ensure players performed at their peak level: “In 1993, when I signed for Liverpool, we didn’t have a physiotherapist. We had a doctor who came on Thursday afternoon. If you were injured on Friday, the problem was yours. What would you do?”

Asked if this was standard practice at clubs at the time, Ruddock replied: “Mike Varney was at Tottenham for about 30 years and at Millwall we had physiotherapists.”

So clearly the problem was Liverpool: “One day I injured my knee. They had a machine… You know the ultrasound they use when you have a baby? Well, that, but they didn’t have any kind of gel to put in machine, so Ronnie Moran (ex-Liverpool captain) went to get some magic liquid in the kitchen. He is the world’s most beloved defender and Fairy is on her knees,” he explained jokingly.