Planet Swans ArchivesFrom own goals, to elbows, good finishes and sloppy passes it pretty much sums up all that we have seen from Jonjo in league games against the side from whom the Swans purchased him at the start of last season.
He has scored twice in three league games against the Reds since he joined the Swans but he claims today that manager Brendan Rodgers told him he did not have to leave Anfield when he had made his mind up that South Wales was to be his next destination.
“I was on the way to Swansea and he told me I didn’t have to go,” said Shelvey
“He spent hours on the phone to my dad in an effort to try and get me to stay. But I had made up my mind to come.”
Shelvey has this week been confirmed as one of the players who will line up in Steven Gerrard’s match to mark the end of his Liverpool career at the end of this season. He is one of a host of stars who will mark the end of the era for the Liverpool captain who was another who wanted him to stay at Anfield.
“I was living next door to Stevie at the time and I texted him to say I was going down to Swansea. He asked me to really consider it. It is a big thing for someone like me to get someone like him saying that to me,” said Shelvey.
“But I wanted to play football and I wanted to know that if you had one bad game after three or four good games you are not going to come out of the team.”
Shelvey will be hoping for less assistance in the home game compared to the last time he faced Liverpool at the Liberty where he had a hand in all four goals as the two sides drew 2-2
“I can remember sitting in my seat just wanting the ground to swallow me up at half-time. I didn’t want to go back out on the pitch,” Shelvey recalls.
“But then the gaffer said he was going to make a substitution and I thought ‘yes I can get off the pitch’. But I’d have been going off the pitch knowing I’d been a failure. Luckily I went back out, rolled my sleeves up, and came through a sticky patch.”
The former Liverpool man is likely to keep his place in a diamond formation that was enough to beat Manchester United in the Swans last home game
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