Jamie Carragher reveals his favourite period as a Liverpool player and names his six best mates

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Jamie Carragher loved his Liverpool career and became a staple of the club from the 2000s to the early 2010s.

The former defender won multiple accolades during his time as a Red, including a Champions League, UEFA Cup, and FA Cup, some of his biggest during the run.

Carragher decided to retire from professional football at the age of 35 and has now found himself in a comfortable role as a pundit.

The Scouser loved the club so much that it was the only one he ever played at during his career, and was recently awarded the One Club Man award by Athletic Club.

He had the experience under many different managers, with some being more successful than others, but according to the player, his favourite time to play for Liverpool was under none other than Gerard Houllier.

Jamie Carragher loved playing under Gerard Houllier

He recently spoke to the Lifejacket channel for their Boot Room series, where he was taken through each pair that he wore during his playing career and spoke about his memories of that time.

When he got around to some of the pairs used in his early days as a professional for the club, he revealed that when Houllier was manager, it was an era with his six best mates that he looked back on fondly.

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While he admits it was not his best time as a footballer in terms of on-pitch performance, he could not help but enjoy the feeling around the club.

Carragher said: “And it was Houllier. I’m going to come in and do it differently. I’m going to want to start with these young players. We want to move on. I’m going to start again and build a really young team. And he was really strict, but we all loved him.

“He was just, I think this era is my favourite time of being a Liverpool player because I felt like the whole club was together. It wasn’t me at my best as a player. That came later with Rafa. But in terms of who I would class as my mates at Liverpool, I would think Michael (Owen), Danny (Murphy), Robbie (Fowler), Didi Hamann, Sami Hyypia, John Arne Riise, that era of sort of the early 2000s.”

It was a team which had some talented players in and you could tell by the way that people like Robbie Fowler and Michael Owen played how much they enjoyed football around that time.

Jamie Carragher says Rafa Benitez was the biggest influence on his playing career

While he may have loved his time with Houllier because of the enjoyment it evoked, when Rafa Benitez came in, he admitted that it was the biggest influence on his professional development.

Benitez led the Reds to that infamous Champions League night in Istanbul in 2005 and he will always be in the rich tapestry of the club’s history for that.

But in general he was an influential manager on the style of play and how Carragher performed as a defender, which he praised in the video.

He explained: “I’d say him and Gerard Houllier really the two biggest influences. But in terms of on the pitch influence, it was Rafa in game like training and positional sense, where to be, when to push up, just the tiniest details about being a defender.

“It was on a different level to what I think English coaches were given to his defenders, which was always, the basic stuff of, the balls on that side, we all come over and the distances between each other and stuff like that. This was like the tiniest detail, feet positions.”

You can tell how he became a very solid defender for Liverpool by just looking at the development from that time and it helped in many of their most successful nights.