Dalglish: I'm lucky to have seen Steven play

It was announced on Friday morning that 17 years after breaking into the Liverpool first team, the midfielder will depart Anfield after the finale of 2014-15.

Scores of fans, pundits, current and former teammates and opposing players have paid tribute to Gerrard in the hours that have followed that announcement.

The reaction is testament to the 34-year-old's standing and achievements in the game - and now Dalglish - a fellow Anfield icon - has offered his thoughts on the news.

"When I think about Steven Gerrard's career at Liverpool, I am filled with gratitude," he wrote in his column in the Daily Mirror.

"I don't want to single out one goal or one performance. I just want to say I feel lucky that he was a Liverpool player and that I saw him play.

"He lifted his team to the most prestigious title in the game. He led the club in that astonishing victory in Istanbul in 2005.

"At that stadium on the outskirts of the city, he wrote his name even larger in the history of his club.

"So I hope that in the next six months, the last six months of his career in Liverpool, people take the chance to come and say thank you to him.

"He has made a massive contribution to the club for a long time and that is why he is revered on Merseyside and beyond. Liverpool are lucky to have had a player like him and a man like him for so long.

"Because when I think of Steven at Liverpool, it will be as much for what he did for the club off the pitch as well as on it.

"Certainly, it will be for the way he has pinged those majestic, destructive passes all around the pitch. It will be for the goals he scored, too, because he perfected a knack of grabbing some awfully important ones.

"And it will be for the way he always found an extra gear when he surged past an opponent and left him trailing.

"But in my second spell in charge of the club I also saw the way he operated as a captain. The man was class personified."

The captain admitted it was with a heavy heart he came to the decision to depart Anfield - but Dalglish feels the Gerrard and Liverpool love story will only be placed on hold.

"He has said that this was the most difficult decision he has ever made," he added. "For probably the first time, he has thought about himself before Liverpool Football Club.

"Good luck to him after everything he has done for Liverpool. Life is not a rehearsal. You only get one go at it and Steven wants to try something new.

"The door will always be open for him at Liverpool because he will leave in the summer with the gratitude of everyone at the club.

"This is not an epitaph and this isn't goodbye. This is only adios."