Forgotten Reds: Bruno Cheyrou, the ‘new Zidane’ who had one glorious January

Not many Liverpool players gave the club something it had never had before.

Bruno Cheyrou did. On a Wednesday night in January 2004, the Frenchman scored the goal that brought Liverpool their first Premier League win at Stamford Bridge.

For a few weeks that winter, he was the toast of Anfield. Then he slipped back into the shadows.

A summer of French promise

To understand the weight Cheyrou carried, go back to the summer of 2002. Gérard Houllier’s Liverpool had won a cup treble in 2001 and had just finished second in the league, their best finish of the Premier League era at that point. The next step was supposed to be the title.

Houllier’s big signings that summer were El-Hadji Diouf, Salif Diao and Cheyrou, a tall, elegant left-sided midfielder from Lille who cost a fee of around £3.7m.

On paper, Cheyrou made sense. He had helped Vahid Halilhodzic’s Lille climb out of the second division and into the Champions League, and in 2001-02 he scored 11 league goals from midfield. One of his European goals was a fierce low strike in a 1-1 draw with Manchester United in Lille.

The Zidane problem

Then came the comparison that followed him everywhere. Houllier, never shy of talking up his players, praised his touch, vision and eye for a pass, and added: “I don’t make comparisons with Zidane lightly.”

He also said his new man needed to toughen up for the Premiership. Nobody remembers that part. A 24-year-old in his first season abroad had been measured against the best player in the world.

The start was promising enough. He impressed on his Anfield bow in a pre-season friendly against Lazio, made his competitive debut as a late substitute in the Community Shield defeat to Arsenal in Cardiff, and scored his first goal in a 5-0 Champions League thrashing of Spartak Moscow in October 2002.

That turned out to be his only goal of the season. Usually stationed on the left of midfield, he looked a fraction too gentle for the Premiership. He played his part in the run to the 2003 League Cup final, including the semi-final win over Sheffield United, but was not in the squad when Liverpool beat Manchester United in Cardiff.

Houllier kept the faith. Like other French players before him, he argued, Cheyrou probably needed a little more time: “Remember the first season at Arsenal? Everyone laughed at Robert Pires.”

One glorious January

On 7 January 2004, with Michael Owen left on the bench, Cheyrou started at Stamford Bridge against Claudio Ranieri’s big-spending Chelsea. Just past the half-hour, Emile Heskey turned on the right and fired a low ball across, and Cheyrou swept it past Carlo Cudicini.

Then came a proper backs-to-the-wall job. Jerzy Dudek limped off, Diouf was sent off late on and Adrian Mutu hit the bar, but Liverpool held on.

He scored again in a 1-1 draw at Wolves a fortnight later. Three days after that came his finest afternoon at Anfield.

Newcastle were the visitors in the FA Cup fourth round, and Cheyrou had them behind inside two minutes. Laurent Robert hit back almost immediately with a thunderous free-kick, but on 61 minutes Steven Gerrard surged down the left and Cheyrou met his cross with a powerful header past Shay Given. Liverpool won 2-1.

Afterwards, he kept admirably level-headed. He admitted he had felt he still had to earn the respect of his team-mates that season, before adding: “I was not the worst player in the world a week ago, and I’m not the best player in the world now.”

It was the wisest thing anyone said about him. Within weeks he was back on the bench, and he made his last appearance in April 2004.

Life after Anfield

When Rafael Benitez arrived that summer, Cheyrou was loaned to Marseille, then to Bordeaux with a view to a permanent deal that never happened.

In 2006 he moved permanently to Rennes, where he became a regular as a holding midfielder. After spells with Anorthosis Famagusta in Cyprus and Nantes, he hung up his boots in 2012. His Liverpool record reads 48 appearances and five goals.

Off the pitch, he has done rather well. After TV punditry, he became sporting director of Paris Saint-Germain’s women’s team in 2017 and then head of recruitment at Lyon. He now works in player development at UEFA, and this summer he joined newly promoted Le Mans as a senior football adviser.

Flop, or victim of the hype?

It is easy to file Cheyrou alongside Diouf and Diao, but that is not entirely fair. A player who scores 11 league goals for a Champions League side, wins France caps and spends years as a Ligue 1 regular can clearly play.

What he could not do was carry the Zidane tag in a Liverpool side that was going backwards. He never nailed down a position in a league that still rewarded running through people rather than round them.

Still, for one January he gave us a night at Stamford Bridge that no Liverpool side had managed before in the Premier League, and a cup double against Newcastle that had the Kop on its feet. Plenty of more celebrated signings have left with less.