Former Liverpool striker Emile Heskey told FourFourTwo that he should not have left Anfield back in 2004.
Heskey opted to leave the Reds due to the big-money arrival of Djibril Cisse pushing him down the pecking order at the club.
Heskey spent four years with Liverpool from 2000 after securing what was then a club record move to Anfield from his boyhood club Leicester City.
Heskey won a historic treble in his first season with the Reds and was a regular under then-manager Gerard Houllier.
However, the former England international sealed a move to Birmingham City in 2004 after Liverpool splashed out £14.5m on Cisse from Auxerre.
Now Heskey believes he should not have been so quick to leave Liverpool for Birmingham, despite the increased competition for places that he would have seen had he have stayed at the club.
Speaking to FourFourTwo the 40-year-old says:
If I could change one decision in my career it would probably be to stay at Liverpool for longer – they won the Champions League the next season.
I had a year left on my contract at Liverpool but Rick Parry [then CEO] told me that Djibril Cisse was coming in and I wouldn’t be playing. I told him that was OK and I’d stay and fight for my place. But he said, ‘No, Cisse has got to play’.
So I had to move on, really, although looking back I think I would have played. They accepted a bid from Birmingham and that was that. But I loved my time with Liverpool – they were great times, fun times and emotional times.
The highest we ever finished in the Premier League was second but we won all of those cups, which was great – I couldn’t have asked for any more.
