Nick Tanner was in the Liverpool defence the night Graeme Souness’s side wiped out a two-goal deficit against Auxerre at Anfield. Not bad for a lad who, only six years earlier, had been playing non-league football in Bristol while working in a factory.
He played 59 games for Liverpool and scored once, against Everton of all teams. A bad back finished him at 28. But his story is one of graft and good humour, and these days he has a claim to fame that very few former players can match.
Floodlight bulbs and a factory floor
Tanner was born in Bristol on 24 May 1965. As a young man he played for Mangotsfield United, a local non-league club, while working for British Aerospace.
In 1985 Bristol Rovers came calling. There was no big cheque involved. The story goes that Mangotsfield let him go in exchange for some floodlight bulbs.
Rovers mostly used him in midfield, and he made more than 100 league appearances for his hometown club in three years.
The call from Kenny
By the summer of 1988 Tanner was ready to move on, and Torquay United, then in the Fourth Division, wanted him.
Then the phone rang at his parents’ house. The voice on the other end said it was Kenny Dalglish, and that he wanted to sign him for Liverpool. Tanner’s first thought was that one of his Rovers team-mates was winding him up.
It was no wind-up. The reigning champions of England paid Rovers £20,000.
From non-league football and a factory job to the biggest club in the country in a little over three years. You couldn’t make it up.
Learning a new trade
Liverpool had other ideas about his position. They saw him as a centre-back rather than a midfielder, and with so much quality ahead of him at the back, he had to be patient.
His chance finally came at Maine Road on 2 December 1989. Gary Gillespie went off injured after 16 minutes, Tanner went on, and Liverpool won 4-1, Ian Rush scoring twice.
He played four league games that season as Liverpool won the title in 1990. It wasn’t enough for a medal. Only two substitutes could be named in those days, and first-team chances were hard to come by.
In 1990 he went out on loan to Norwich City and then Swindon Town, and it would have been easy to wonder whether his Liverpool days were numbered.
Souness’s man
Instead, everything changed. Dalglish resigned in February 1991, and by the start of the next season Alan Hansen had retired and Gary Gillespie had gone to Celtic.
Graeme Souness gave Tanner a proper run in the side, and he grabbed it. He missed the first two league games of 1991-92 and then became a virtual ever-present, playing 45 times in all that season.
A night against Auxerre
It was also Liverpool’s first season back in Europe after the ban that followed Heysel. The rest of England’s clubs had been readmitted a year earlier, but Liverpool had to serve an extra season.
On 23 October 1991 Liverpool lost the first leg of their UEFA Cup second-round tie 2-0 in Auxerre. Two weeks later, on 6 November, only 23,094 turned up at Anfield for the return.
Those who stayed away missed a treat. Jan Mølby scored a penalty early on, Mike Marsh headed in his first goal for the club, and Mark Walters got the third late on to send Liverpool through 3-2 on aggregate.
Tanner played in both legs. Swarovski Tirol were beaten home and away in the next round before Genoa ended the run in the quarter-finals.
Derby day at Goodison
Then came the moment every Liverpool defender dreams about. On 28 December 1991, in front of 37,681 at Goodison Park, Tanner put Liverpool ahead four minutes before half-time.
It was a close-range effort that crept over the line. Not the prettiest goal ever scored in a derby, but they all count, and it was the only one he ever got for the club.
Mo Johnston equalised in the second half and the game finished 1-1, with Peter Beardsley, by then an Everton player, in the opposition side.
Back to Bristol
The FA Cup brought a trip down memory lane. After a 4-0 win at Crewe in the third round, Liverpool were drawn in the fourth round against Bristol Rovers, who were playing their home games at Twerton Park in Bath.
Tanner started against his old club on 5 February 1992. Dean Saunders scored, it finished 1-1, and Liverpool won the replay at Anfield before going all the way to Wembley, where they beat Sunderland 2-0 in the final.
The day United’s title dream died
On 26 April 1992 Tanner started at Anfield against Manchester United, who had to win to keep their title hopes alive after Leeds won at Sheffield United earlier that day.
He was replaced by Barry Venison after 22 minutes. Rush scored his first ever goal against United and Walters added a second. Liverpool won 2-0, Leeds were champions, and the Kop enjoyed every minute of it.
The back gives way
The following season started with a seven-goal Charity Shield at Wembley, which Leeds won 4-3 thanks to an Eric Cantona hat-trick. Tanner started that day.
But a persistent back problem was taking its toll. He played ten games in 1992-93, four of them in the first season of the Premier League, and the last of them was a 2-1 League Cup replay defeat at Crystal Palace on 16 December 1992.
In 1994, at the age of 28, he had to retire from the professional game.
He has never been one for self-pity. He gave his all in every game, and Liverpool got good value for their £20,000. Few on the Kop would argue.
Life after Liverpool
Back in the West Country, he managed six non-league clubs between 1997 and 2011, Mangotsfield United among them. He has also been chief scout at Forest Green Rovers.
Away from the dugout he has worked in insurance, has run a Liverpool Legends events company and has done analysis on Liverpool games for BBC Radio Merseyside.
In 2017 he told his story in an autobiography, From A Field To Anfield.
Top of the world
And then there is the fantasy football.
In October 2019 Tanner went top of the official Fantasy Premier League, ahead of nearly seven million managers worldwide. He had only started playing the game the season before.
In December he traded first place with Magnus Carlsen, the world chess champion, and took it back from him. His team name? winorloseonthebooze. Proof, if any were needed, that he never lost his sense of humour.
Once a Red
Fifty-nine games, one goal and a career cut short by injury. On paper it is a modest Liverpool record.
But Nick Tanner went from non-league football and a factory job to the champions of England, played his part in some famous nights, and scored at Goodison in a derby. Plenty of better-known players never managed that last one.
He did it all with a smile, and he has stayed a Red ever since.
