Liverpool great Kenny Dalglish has expressed his appreciation to current club captain Steven Gerrard.
The 34-year old midfielder has announced that he will not be returning to Anfield next season after more than two decades wearing the famous red shirt.
Dalglish, who managed Gerrard in 2011 and 2012, said he felt grateful for having watched a player such as Gerrard serve the club with such passion and loyalty over a distinguished career.
"When I think about Steven Gerrard's career at Liverpool, I am filled with gratitude," he wrote in his column in the Daily Mirror.
"I don't want to single out one goal or one performance. I just want to say I feel lucky that he was a Liverpool player and that I saw him play.
"He lifted his team to the most prestigious title in the game. He led the club in that astonishing victory in Istanbul in 2005 (in the Champions League).
"At that stadium on the outskirts of the city, he wrote his name even larger in the history of his club.
"So I hope that in the next six months, the last six months of his career in Liverpool, people take the chance to come and say thank you to him.
"He has made a massive contribution to the club for a long time and that is why he is revered on Merseyside and beyond. Liverpool are lucky to have had a player like him and a man like him for so long.
"Because when I think of Steven at Liverpool, it will be as much for what he did for the club off the pitch as well as on it.
"Certainly, it will be for the way he has pinged those majestic, destructive passes all around the pitch. It will be for the goals he scored, too, because he perfected a knack of grabbing some awfully important ones.
"And it will be for the way he always found an extra gear when he surged past an opponent and left him trailing.
"But in my second spell in charge of the club I also saw the way he operated as a captain. The man was class personified."
