EXCLUSIVE: Jordan Henderson on dealing with adversity in his career

EXCLUSIVE: ‘Some people have wanted me out of here from the day I arrived, so now is no different! I prefer it when I have my doubters’: Jordan Henderson on dealing with adversity and his battle to always prove himself at Liverpool

• Liverpool skipper Jordan Henderson believes the Reds are ‘always’ evolving 
• The midfielder has dealt with setbacks and adversity throughout his career
• But his full focus is now on helping his side get their poor season back on track 
• There is unrest aimed at the clubs owners over a perceived lack of investment 

Is this the end? That is what some people have been asking. A third of the season has gone and Liverpool are closer to the Premier League relegation zone than they are to the Champions League spots. 

They have won four, drawn four and lost four. They have lost to the bottom two clubs in their last two league games. Their midfield is ageing. They’re ninth, 15 points adrift of Arsenal. So are they in decline? Is it over?

Jordan Henderson, the Liverpool captain, looks up from his spartan plate of food — plain omelette, five slices of avocado, no dressing, no sauce, no garnish, no fuss, nothing fancy, nothing extraneous, nothing superfluous — in the players’ canteen and fixes me for a moment with the kind of withering glare that once turned Diego Costa to dust.

Jordan Henderson claims that Liverpool are ‘always’ evolving despite a poor start to the season

‘So is this the end?’ I ask, mumbling something about playing devil’s advocate.

‘No, of course not,’ says Henderson.

Then there is a pause while he allows the full vacuity of the question to sink in.

‘The end for who?’ he says.

‘For this team,’ I say.

‘When you say “this team”,’ he says, ‘the team always evolves. Is this team the same as three or four years ago? I don’t know. You tell me. It evolves all the time. Players go out and players come in. It evolves constantly. The thing that stays the same is that you have got to keep going, keep working, keep fighting.

‘But for Liverpool, it will never be the end. The players that are here now, the manager, the fans, the club, the whole thing, we will always fight and come back from bad periods. People are quick to jump on what has gone wrong but it was only four or five months ago where we played every game we could, won two trophies, got to the Champions League final and lost the league by a point.

During his time at Anfield Henderson has lifted the Champions League and Premier League

‘You have to put things into perspective a little bit. That does not mean everything’s great, because it’s not. But I know the players in the dressing room and I know they will give absolutely everything every time they play. The most important thing is how you deal with adversity and setbacks. We have done that very well over the past few years. And now we have to do it again.’

Henderson is no stranger to that. He has been dealing with adversity and setbacks for most of his career. The rage to prove people wrong consumes him. He has always felt like he is fighting a battle for respect. In his obsession with modesty and self-deprecation, he even under-estimates himself sometimes.

He wanted to call his autobiography, which was published last week, “With or Without Me”. ‘That’s how I feel about the trophies Liverpool have won over the last few years,’ he writes in it. ‘They’d have won them with or without me. I’m not Luis Suarez or Steven Gerrard or Virgil van Dijk or Mo Salah. The success is not down to me.’

Jurgen Klopp knows better. His team-mates know better. Liverpool fans who watch the team week in, week out know better, too. And even though one of the few highlights of Liverpool’s troubled start to the season was Henderson’s sublime pass with the outside of his right foot to put Salah through for the opening goal against Ajax recently, some are trying to hurry the skipper out of the door at Anfield.

‘It’s been like that my whole career,’ he says. ‘People have probably wanted me to leave from the day I arrived here. Really. So it’s not going to change until I do leave. It’s part and parcel of the game. Everyone’s got different opinions about football. Some opinions you hear seem quite extreme and you think “Bloody hell”.

‘There is no point even getting involved in all of that. Do what you do. Focus on your job. Focus on trying to be the best you can be, focus on trying to help the team as much as possible, to be successful and win games. I have always had doubters. I have got to the point where I prefer to have it than not. There would be something wrong if I didn’t have that.’

The Liverpool captain has admitted that he has been facing adversity throughout his career

Last month, Henderson found himself fighting a battle on another front, too, after the Arsenal defender, Gabriel Magalhaes, made a complaint about a comment he alleged Henderson had made to him during Arsenal’s 3-2 win over Liverpool at the Emirates on October 9. The Football Association conducted an investigation and announced 10 days ago that it would not take any disciplinary action.

Henderson has not spoken about the incident before and does not want to speak about it now. He has long been a proponent of empowering players to come forward if they feel they are victims of abuse and does not want to set that back. It is hard enough for black players to protest in the first place without every complaint being turned back on them in a torrent of discord and hate and vilification and recrimination.

‘I understand why I have to be asked about this,’ says Henderson, ‘but what I tried to do was respect the process. I have spoken before about black players being brave enough to speak out about discrimination so I couldn’t then change my stance. I still feel I need to show respect now, even though it’s been dealt with.

‘I’ve let the FA do what they needed to do and I still feel it wouldn’t be right for me to speak about it. It is just as important to respect the process afterwards as it is during the case. I could speak to you all day about how I was feeling but I have to accept what happened and move on. By the way, that wasn’t easy.

Henderson was subject of an FA investigation into an alleged comment made to Gabriel Magalhaes (L) when his side played Arsenal in October

‘There were a million and one things I wanted to say — emotional things — but I think it would have been wrong. It has not changed my mind that people must be empowered to come forward if they feel they have been wronged. It has changed my thoughts a little bit about the person who has been accused but if people feel they have been discriminated against, they must come forward.

‘It would not be right for me to sit here and say how hard it was for me, because there is another person involved as well. It has been dealt with and it was another learning experience in my life.’

His full focus now is on helping Liverpool get their season back on track

Henderson’s full focus now is on getting Liverpool’s season back on track at Spurs on Sunday afternoon. The club qualified second in their Champions League group after last week’s victory over Napoli at Anfield but they are still reeling from successive domestic defeats away to Nottingham Forest and at home to Leeds United.

There is unrest and dismay among the supporters and most ire has been directed at the club’s owner, the Fenway Sports Group, for its perceived lack of investment in new players. The failure to strengthen midfield, where Fabinho’s performances have been singled out for criticism, and lower its age profile — Fabinho is 29, Henderson is 32, Thiago Alcantara is 31 — has been a particular source of angst.

‘Four or five months ago, we nearly won every trophy you could win,’ says Henderson. ‘I don’t think you can turn into a really bad team and really bad players in that space of time. We haven’t aged overnight. We know the only way to get back to that is by working harder than anyone else.

‘I have been in situations like this before, if not worse. I know things can change so quickly, good and bad. You can be in a bad period and a few weeks later, you have got momentum and you have got confidence, you have got everything and that carries on. It can also work the other way where you are in a good moment and all of a sudden, you have a dip.

‘It is about trying to keep that middle ground and keep focused on what you are trying to do. Everyone has injuries but my perception, at least, is that we have had more than anyone else. And to big players. People mention the long season we had last year and we didn’t get a long enough break but it is pointless moaning about it. It is not going to change anything.

The 32-year-old has been at the Anfield club for 11 years having first arrived back in 2011

‘We need to work as hard as we possibly can. We have got a great culture at the club, a great dressing room, and sometimes in football you have bad moments; that’s what happens. It’s how you react and how you deal with those moments. Ultimately, it makes you who you are as a team and it makes you better.

‘That’s what happened to us when we were successful: we had bad moments. People forget, but we had periods where we lost games and had setbacks in leagues and cups. That’s what makes you. We have been together a long time and we are going through a rough period but we know how to get ourselves out of it. In the end, it will come right.’

The Borussia Dortmund midfielder, Jude Bellingham, 19, is one player many would like to see brought in to refresh Liverpool’s midfield and his star has risen so fast that he is now widely seen as a starter for England at the World Cup later this month, a development that will not make Henderson’s chances of forcing his way into the side any easier.

Jude Bellingham is one who has been labelled a potential successor to Henderson at Liverpool

‘I am very excited by Jude as a player and as a character and a person,’ says Henderson. ‘I can’t speak highly enough of him. I’m cautious of speaking too much around him because it is easy to forget how young he is and there is a lot of pressure on him.

‘Let him play and let him enjoy his football. He has been doing fantastically well again this season, which is no surprise. That is a huge, huge bonus going into the World Cup to have a player like him in form.’

But Henderson is desperate to excel on the pitch and contribute to the culture of the squad off the pitch in Qatar. He was a crucial part of the England side that got to the semi-finals of the World Cup in Russia four years ago but injury reduced him to cameo roles as England rode a wave of euphoria all the way to the final of last year’s European Championship.

He watched from the sidelines during the summer when England went four games without a win in the space of 11 days in June and has seen England manager Gareth Southgate increasingly heavily criticised despite a record in major tournaments which has made him the country’s most successful boss since Sir Alf Ramsey.

‘Does it surprise me, the way the manager has been treated?’ says Henderson. ‘If you look at what he has achieved since he took over, the way he has been treated would surprise anyone with half a brain. But we’re in football. Gareth knows that through playing. He had it then. He would have known that before he took the job.

Henderson insisted he is not legendary captain Steven Gerrard.

‘And you have to remember that the England job is probably the most focused individual job you can have because you are representing the country. So everybody in the country has different opinions. People have different opinions about squads and players and formations but you can’t get lost in any of that. For us, it is the same as what we have been doing for the last two tournaments: just go out and be together and be one team and play with a smile on your face.

‘You can see the enjoyment that players have had in playing for their country. Gareth has brought that enjoyment back for players. We have got to use that again. There is no point being negative going into a tournament. You have got to be together and the difference that makes to the players is massive. You speak about the summer not going according to plan. But why? It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to work it out. You have got four games after a full season where players have played 50 or 60 games and you are asking them to play four games in 10 days.

‘I could see it a mile off when I was watching. The players looked like a shell. They looked so tired. You can’t read into games like that. We know what we’re capable of. We know we are capable of beating anyone on our day when we are at it. But it is about consistency. It is about learning from the past in tournament football. If you are not quite at it, it can be over quickly.

‘Yes, it’s going to be different with it being in the winter but we need to enjoy the difference. We always worry about the World Cup being at the end of the season when the players are tired. Well now, it’s during the season so maybe we’ll be more fresh. You can’t get too caught up in the timing of it.’

As he gets up to go, I ask Henderson what he thinks about his old sparring partner, Matt Hancock, the Health Secretary who said footballers should ‘take a pay cut and play their part’ during the pandemic, signing up for I’m a Celebrity Get Me Out of Here.

‘I’m looking forward to watching Jill Scott on it,’ he says, mentioning the England women’s football legend, who is also taking part. ‘Matt Hancock? We’ll get him to do all the challenges. Underground with the snakes, he can do all them.’

Jordan Henderson: The Autobiography (Penguin Michael Joseph £25) is out now.

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