Scared off by the £100,000 asking price for a player who was yet to clock-up 100 professional appearances or kick a ball in the top two divisions of the Football League, Lawrenson instead moved to Second Division Brighton and Hove Albion, who he would help reach the top-flight for the first time in their history two years later. Reassuringly comfortable on the ball, with a turn of speed which could be breathtaking, he was the perfect foil for Hansen who had a sixth sense when it came to positioning and was even more comfortable with the ball at his feet than Lawrenson was.īob Paisley picked Hansen up from Partick Thistle in May 1977 for £110,000, and that very same summer registered serious interest in also signing Lawrenson, who had just been voted as Preston North End’s player of the year, in what had been a very near-miss on promotion from the Third Division. The image of this version of Lawrenson is completely at odds with the visage he struck on the pitch as a player. Even to the majority of Liverpool fans, the club he served with such style and skill, he is all-too-often viewed askance. To an entire generation, Lawrenson has been no more than a caricature, a mild irritant of a television and radio pundit, a grumpy old man armed with outmoded theories on the game of football. Lawrenson’s stunning versatility meant that he played significant swathes of his first two and last two seasons at Anfield in a variety of positions, which drew him away from his indelible partnership with Hansen.
They shared the Liverpool dressing room for six and a half seasons, until Lawrenson befell a devastating recurrence of an Achilles injury against Arsenal at Anfield in January 1988, which prematurely ended his playing career at the age of 30.
Alan Hansen and Mark Lawrenson’s union in the centre of defence for the all-conquering Liverpool of the 1980s was so hypnotic that time has managed to blur the length of time they operated in tandem of one another.
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