Jurgen Klopp transformed Liverpool into a swashbuckling, front-footed attacking team during his nine years in charge at Anfield, with the playing style now synonymous with the Reds.

However, while Andoni Iraola is currently doing his best to live up to that standard, Liverpool have not always been so easy on the eye. Rewind 20 years to Rafa Benitez’s time with the Reds, and they were often a slightly turgid watch.

Morientes had been expected to become the focal point of Liverpool’s front line after arriving in January 2005, but he never really got going, lasting only 18 months and scoring 12 goals in 61 appearances.

Speaking in conversation with former Real Madrid teammate Iker Casillas, Morientes has now admitted that he partly blames himself for his disappointing time at Liverpool, having been so excited to join the Reds that he did not check whether Benitez’s team would be set up to suit him. Sadly, according to the 50-year-old, it was not.

“People ask where did you fail to perform to the level expected of you?’ And I say, ‘Liverpool.’ I always think about it and say it was my fault, it was my mistake because, at that point, I was desperate to leave Real Madrid. I was at odds with everyone and I wanted out,” he said.

“But afterwards, I realised how stupid I’d been not to speak to Rafa Benitez and ask him, ‘How does this team play?’ For example, after Liverpool I went to Valencia, and that time I made the decision more with my head than my heart. I knew how Valencia played and understood the way they wanted to play, with two wingers and two full-backs going outside. When I arrived at Liverpool, everything was the opposite, it was football played centrally.

“They had [Jon Arne] Riise and [Steve] Finnan, Finnan was arriving a lot and Riise was about going inwards and hitting it like Roberto Carlos. In the end I said ‘who cares about me?’ Luis Garcia was a great player, but he was one of those players who goes inwards and finishes the play or slips you a pass. So in the end it was either [Steven] Gerrard passed it to me or he [Garcia] passed it to me. I had to earn space within the area or pass it to Xabi Alonso, but very good crosses and finishes, very few. I thought ‘damn’.

“When I think about it that was my worst moment in a team, at Liverpool. I wasn’t comfortable for many reasons, but for that reason, for not having analysed it properly, I would say it’s not football that I feel comfortable with.”

Had Benitez supplied Morientes with some wingers who liked to beat their full-back and whip crosses into the box, he could easily have ended up being a superb signing for Liverpool. Instead, he shuffled back to Spain after a season-and-a-half of what might have been.