The setting is Allerton Manor Golf Club in a leafy suburb south of Liverpool city centre.

Graeme Souness, one of the greatest players in Liverpool’s illustrious history, is holding court in front of an attentive crowd of 150 supporters when the conversation turns to his turbulent managerial reign at Anfield.

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And he knows what’s coming.

“I’m going to bring it up before you do,” Souness tells me, grasping the microphone firmly. “The Sun incident — that’s the single biggest regret in my whole life. No ifs, no buts. Whenever it comes up, I apologise for it. That’s all I can do. I know the hurt I caused. I wish I could turn the clock back, but I can’t.”

The crowd broke into sustained applause.

That “incident” is the reason Souness’ presence at an event organised by the Merseyside branch of the Official Liverpool Supporters’ Club is such a novelty.

It wasn’t Liverpool’s alarming decline on the field during his time as manager in the early 1990s that wrecked his legacy, but his decision to sell the story of his recovery from a triple heart bypass operation to a newspaper that has been loathed on Merseyside since they peddled lies in their coverage of Hillsborough in 1989.

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The timing intensified the backlash Souness felt. On April 15, 1992 — the third anniversary of the disaster — he was pictured on the front page of The Sun kissing his then-girlfriend Karen below the headline ‘Loverpool’.

It seems unthinkable now but, despite the fallout, he remained in charge for another 21 months before resigning after a wretched FA Cup defeat to Bristol City in January 1994.

Souness doesn’t look for excuses, but he does seek to provide some context. The Sun’s Merseyside football correspondent, Mike Ellis, wasn’t ostracised by the club following Hillsborough and some existing and former players had continued to speak to the tabloid when Souness arrived as manager in April 1991.

Supporters led a boycott, urging shops across Merseyside not to stock it as the families continued their fight for truth and justice, but The Sun was only banned from Anfield and Liverpool’s training ground by the club in 2017.

“I wasn’t in Liverpool when Hillsborough happened, I was in Glasgow. I didn’t know the depth of the feeling here in this city,” Souness insists. “But I’m not pointing the finger at anyone else. I shouldn’t have dealt with them.

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“Where I was a wee bit unlucky was the timing. After the operation I tried to do too much too soon, I got an infection and they had to open me up again. That meant a longer stay in hospital.

“We had the FA Cup semi-final replay against Portsmouth at Villa Park on the Monday night (April 13). The Sun asked if they could have a photo of me and Karen and I said ‘only if we win’.

“As the game went to extra time (Liverpool won on penalties), it missed the deadline for the Tuesday so was published on Wednesday instead, the anniversary. But just to be clear, I am not blaming anyone but myself for it. Great times at Liverpool were soured by me dealing with The Sun when I was manager.”

Souness should be revered at Anfield given his remarkable achievements in the club’s midfield. He won three European Cups, five league titles and four League Cups after signing from Middlesbrough in January 1978.

On his 359th and final appearance for Liverpool, he captained them to European Cup final glory against Roma in May 1984 before joining Italian club Sampdoria.

However, in the three decades since he was manager, he’s not been embraced like other legends of the club. There are no banners paying homage to him on the Kop and when the old boys are reunited at Anfield, he’s been conspicuous by his absence. It all dates back to that interview he gave.

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Tom Keegan, treasurer of the Merseyside branch of the Official LFC Supporters Club, decided it was time to try to build bridges in the wake of Liverpool’s Premier League title triumph in 2020.

Souness accepted an invitation to do a Q&A with members over Zoom during the pandemic and the reception was overwhelmingly positive. That process of reconciliation led to him recently making the 550-mile round trip from his home in Dorset for a rare event in the city he once called home.

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“Graeme is one of the greatest players and greatest captains to ever represent the club and it’s sad that he’s been on the outside of things for so long,” Keegan said. “I was at Hillsborough, I understand the upset, but you can see that he feels regret. How many times can you say sorry? I just felt we should do something about it before it’s too late.

“You’re not going to change everyone’s opinion, but the feedback has been excellent. It’s clear how much he loves this city and this club.”

The juxtaposition when Souness discussed his playing and managerial days at Liverpool was stark.

“What a place to go to work, a dressing room full of winners, the camaraderie, the togetherness, the laughs we had, the success, the aura around the place. The best years of my life were spent as a player at Liverpool and no one can ever take that away from me,” he said.

Souness was a popular appointment at Anfield in April 1991 after Kenny Dalglish’s shock resignation two months earlier. He had returned to the UK from Italy to take over at Rangers, initially as player-manager, in 1986. He was on the brink of winning a fourth Scottish title when he accepted the Liverpool job.

“I shouldn’t have taken it. I’d turned it down twice,” he said. “But I was being hounded in Scotland. I’d been banned from the touchline and I had helicopters above my house in Edinburgh, reporters following me along the motorway. There was no escape from it.

“I ended up saying ‘yes’ because of my love for Liverpool. I thought I was the best man for the job. I took it at the wrong time. There’s no one sadder than me about how things turned out.”

Souness inherited an ageing team. A rebuilding job was required, but he acknowledges he tried to change too much, too soon.

“When I went to Rangers, I was talking to a group of guys who had won very little. They bought into it pretty quickly when I said: ‘You aren’t going out to get p***** two or three times a week, you aren’t going to have beer or fish and chips on the bus after away games’.

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“These were things I’d learned in Italy. When I said those things at Liverpool, I was told: ‘You did the same thing here and you were successful’. There was a bit of resistance and I fell out with a few people.

“Since Bill Shankly’s time, the players had got changed at Anfield for training and then travelled by coach to Melwood. I felt money should be invested at Melwood so the players could change there and then not go near the stadium until matchdays. That was frowned upon.

“I was criticised for doing away with the boot room at Anfield, but that was nothing to do with me. The truth was the club needed a bigger media room.”

Souness owns the mistakes he made. Not least impulsively agreeing to sanction exits for senior players like Peter Beardsley, Steve McMahon and Ray Houghton.

“What I should have done with them was say: ‘OK, but give me time to find your replacement’. Once you sell them, you are chasing the game a bit. But my reaction to anyone was always, ‘If you want to leave this football club, you can f*** off’.”

Liverpool won the FA Cup in 1992 but finished sixth in each of his two full seasons in charge. Recruitment let them down, with signings such as Paul Stewart, Nigel Clough, Torben Piechnik and Julian Dicks failing to deliver.

Listening to Souness, it’s clear he became disillusioned as it dawned on him how attitudes had changed and standards had nosedived.

“Did I get frustrated? Did I allow that to show itself? Yes, I did,” he said. “When I lost a game, I couldn’t speak to anyone. I just couldn’t understand players laughing and joking, being nice to people who have just beaten you.”

He gives another example of how his values jarred with his players when Wimbledon midfielder Vinnie Jones scrawled the word ‘bothered’ on the This Is Anfield sign in the tunnel before one match.

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“I went to the players and said ‘Do you see what they’ve done?’,” he recalls. “They were laughing about it. That really p***** me off.

“If someone had said that to Jimmy Case or Ray Kennedy in the team I played in, they would have been tearing the door off the hinges to get to them. My team thought that was funny. I wish I’d been playing that day.”

After Liverpool, Souness’ managerial journey continued at Galatasaray, Southampton, Torino, Benfica, Blackburn Rovers and Newcastle United. He then spent 15 years as a pundit for Sky Sports before stepping down at the end of last season. He still has a national newspaper column and works for radio station talkSPORT, with his opinions still often generating controversy — most recently, further outspoken criticisms of Paul Pogba.

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But football is only one side to the man. In June, Souness helped raise over £1million ($1.25m) for the charity Debra UK as part of a six-person relay team that swam across the English Channel.

He was inspired to take on the challenge after meeting 14-year-old Isla Grist, who suffers from the rare skin disease epidermolysis bullosa. It is a cause close to his heart and his voice breaks with emotion as he discusses it.

“Meeting Isla changed my life. I can’t say the swim was fun, but there was a sense of achievement and we’ve managed to raise awareness about the charity and the devastation this horrific disease causes.”

The night in Liverpool raised a further £3,580 for Debra UK. After taking questions from the audience, Souness — watched on by his former assistants Sammy Lee and Phil Boersma — stepped down from the stage and spent an hour posing for photos and signing autographs. His former Anfield team-mate David Fairclough then presented him with the Tom Saunders Award from the supporters club for his outstanding contribution to Liverpool on the field.

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Souness had been nervous about the reception he would be given. He left with applause ringing in his ears — and it felt significant.

“In some people’s eyes, it doesn’t matter what I say or how many times I say it,” he added. “It saddens me when I think about it, but I have to accept that. I just want to thank you for the warmth you have shown me. It means a lot.”

(Top photo: Ian MacNicol/Getty Images)