Steven Gerrard has achieved more in his career than most footballers could dream of; two FA Cups, a Champions League title, Man of the Match awards in the finals of both competitions, 114 caps for England and captaincy of the Three Lions and two major tournaments, a record eight acknowledgements in the PFA Premier League Team of the Year and the Bronze award for the 2005 Ballon d'Or, all the while representing his boyhood club Liverpool exclusively, serving as skipper for over a decade.

It's Roy of the Rovers stuff, local-lad-comes-good-copypasta, the clichéd fable of success, sacrifice and subsequent adoration that entices young children towards our beautiful game. But now amid it's unceremonious - and, at times, unsavoury - end, is Liverpool's 'Captain Fantastic' in danger of being remembered for the wrong reasons? Will his legacy become one of ill-discipline, mistakes and underachievement, rather than recognition as one of the greatest players of his generation?

Let's start with the elephant in the room - yesterday's 38-second 'appearance' against Manchester United.

'Gerrard's last' has become the slogan of the season for the Anfield fanbase. 'This will be Gerrard's last match at the Bernabeu', they cried when Brendan Rodgers left him out of the starting XI to face Real Madrid in November; 'This will be Gerrard's last visit to a League Two side', they exclaimed after his FA Cup brace against AFC Wimbledon in January; 'This will be Gerrard's last Merseyside derby', they remarked, wiping one huge tear from their collective eye during a scoreless draw with Everton in February.

But yesterday's 'Gerrard's last' had some real meaning - his final chance to get one over the old enemy at Anfield, the club he's detested since childhood, whilst overturning a one-nil deficit after coming on at the interval. The kind of challenge the legendary Steven Gerrard was born for.

Before the malfunctioning Anfield clock had restarted for the second-half, however, the former England captain was already heading back to the locker room, seeing red for a cowardly, cynical and repulsive stamp on Manchester United's Ander Herrera.

Singularly, it's hardly enough to capsize the reputation Gerrard's built since his Reds debut in 1998, and the sending off was by no means the principal factor in Liverpool's first Premier League defeat since a 3-0 thumping at Old Trafford in December. Yet, history will remember the 34-year-old as the villain of his final act against United - a recurring role throughout the last twelve months at both club and international level.

Since the end of last season and that infamous slip against Chelsea, a dastardly chant has haunted Gerrard around every footballing venue in England. I'm sure you all know the words. The rhyme's popularity on English terraces - even in the midfielder's absence and during games that feature neither Liverpool nor Chelsea - can be sourced to one single, coherent factor; that slip, allowing Demba Ba a free run at goal and subsequently ending the Reds' chances of claiming last term's English crown, confirmed Gerrard's status as the greatest English player not to win a top flight title - even when, at the veteran age of 33, the most viable opportunity to do so finally fell into his lap.

The prevailing concern is that before Gerrard's intrinsic role in the folk-law come-back against AC Milan in Istanbul, before he's recognised as one of just nine players to reach over 100 caps for England, before his record as the only player to have scored in the finals of the FA Cup, League Cup, UEFA Cup and Champions League, his descript sidebar during future productions on Sky Sports and Match of the Day will read exactly that; the greatest England international not to win the Premier League title.

Those feeling particularly cruel might also feel inclined to mention his lackadaisical header in the goal that eliminated England from the 2014 World Cup, courtesy of former team-mate Luis Suarez, ending a Three Lions career that never quite hit the heights expected.

For anybody who watched Steven Gerrard regularly at his peak, the buccaneering, goal-scoring heart and soul of an otherwise unspectacular Liverpool side, the last year of heartache for the Reds legend will be put down to mitigating circumstances; the fact that neither the Liverpool of 2013/14 or the England of last summer were particularly worthy of their respective accolades when compared in quality to the eventual winners, Manchester City and Germany.

Likewise, as Jamie Carragher convincingly argued in the Sky Sports studio yesterday afternoon, Gerrard has always been a player driven by passion and Liverpudlian pride; whilst it made him the hero of Istanbul, the Man of the Match in the 2006 FA Cup final and the indisputable Kop icon of the last decade, it's also lead to four Premier League red cards against the Reds' biggest rivals - two against Everton, two against United.

But the cold light of history isn't quite so forgiving, and the younger generation who missed his heroics of yesteryear only have Gerrard's recurring failures of the last twelve months to recall. Although Sunday's stamp may constitute a few isolated paragraphs in the final chapter of the skipper's otherwise incredible Liverpool career, it epitomises perfectly the negative effect recent events - the Demba Ba slip, the World Cup header and now the Ander Herrera stamp - will have on Gerrard's legacy.

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