Former Liverpool centre-back Daniel Agger was pursuing his coaching career in charge of HB Koge – and had looked to his past for the team’s new recruit. There’s little question the Danish defender was one of the finest the Reds have had in the modern age, with only injuries ultimately stopping him being seen as one of the best in the Premier League.

After a spell out of the game following retirement, where he attended his business interests while watching the Reds from afar, he then started on the managerial ladder with the second-tier side in his home nation. Ahead of the 2021/22 season, which started on 23 July against newly relegated Horsens, Agger has looked back to his final campaign with Liverpool and a team-mate who almost helped the Reds win the Premier League – Jon Flanagan.

The former Anfield full-back signed a two-year deal to play for HBK, having left Charleroi after a short-term deal last term. In 2013/14, both were regulars in the back line as Liverpool, under Brendan Rodgers, played a fast-paced attacking game which saw the Reds finish second. Agger played 23 games that season, Flanagan 25, in what has turned out to be the best year of the Scouser’s career.
At the end of that season Flanagan earned his first and only England cap and was on the standby list for England’s World Cup squad – but since then, he has been unable to settle at a club with just one real season of continuous action. Injury ruled him out of 2014/15 and loans to Burnley and Bolton thereafter failed to reignite his form.
A move to Rangers saw one promising season in 2018/19, where he played 30 times, but he was allowed to leave in 2020 and eventually signed in Belgium for Charleroi – though he never played for them. As such, his last appearance came in January 2020, pre-Covid shutdown of football.