Peter Crouch is on a warning from his wife’s family not to do anything to damage Liverpool’s Premier League title chances when Burnley visit Anfield on Sunday.

“I’ve had a few people on already, and I don’t even know if they’re joking or not,” he says. “They’re basically saying: ‘Don’t be doing anything stupid like scoring.’ I’ve got a lot of friends in the area as well. I was up there last week and a few people were telling me: ‘Don’t expect to be able to come back if you do score.’ ”

Crouch was a Liverpool player when he met his wife, the model and television personality Abbey Clancy, in the mid-2000s; in the past, the former England striker has illustrated her lack of interest in football by recounting how she would call him at 2.45pm on a Saturday, having forgotten he was about to play a match.

Most of the rest of the Clancy family, though, are rather more invested in Sunday lunchtime’s events at Anfield. Having played for Liverpool in a Champions League final, Crouch fully understands that passion.

“I know what it means to the city, having been up there,” he says. “I was actually at the game when Raheem Sterling scored [for Liverpool against Manchester City in April 2014] in the year they didn’t quite get over the line. Just after that, it felt like that was it. The whole city felt they were going to win the league that year.