Milner has become the most creative player in a single Champions League season through the unassuming virtues of versatility, game-management and fitting into a system

Sometimes the cock crows at midnight, the cats bark a dawn chorus and the cow does indeed jump over the moon. Just as every now and then a football statistic crops up that goes against every prevailing metric and trend, which seems not so much an anomaly as a case of football simply kicking off its shoes and enjoying itself.

Only the stoniest heart could fail to be cheered a little by the news that James Milner is now out there alone as the most incisive creative player over the course of a single season in Champions League history.

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Not only has Milner contributed more goalscoring assists than Lionel Messi, Cristiano Ronaldo, Neymar, Andrés Iniesta and Xavi. He has done it having played fewer minutes than all of them, and while shouldering close to zero creative expectation, performing in effect as a defensive midfielder and occasional full-back.

As Roma wobbled and reeled like a boxer punched out of shape in the second half at Anfield on Tuesday night, Milner’s right-wing corner was headed in by Roberto Firmino to take his own total to a record nine assists this season in world football’s premier club competition. This probably should not be happening. Milner himself was moved to tweet a typically wry response to Uefa’s celebration of this achievement, in the process sub-referencing and also contradicting his own Boring Milner persona (do keep up).

And yet there it is all the same, tribute to Milner’s underrated precision at set pieces, his fine, accurate crosses with both feet, and indeed to Liverpool’s own strikingly well-drilled team dynamic. All this with a second leg in Rome and quite possibly a final in Kiev to come. For Milner these are some hard-earned, late-breaking high notes to a career spent close to, but often a little in the shadows of, the main stage.

Milner does not start every week for Liverpool. He probably would not have played on Tuesday night if Emre Can were fit. But he is now unavoidably central to Jürgen Klopp’s plan for the remainder of the season following the trauma of Alex Oxlade-Chamberlain’s knee injury in the first half at Anfield.

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As things stand Liverpool will face Roma, Chelsea and quite possibly Real Madrid or Bayern Munich with only Jordan Henderson, Gigi Wijnaldum and – yes – Europe’s deadliest provider of assists to fill the central midfield.

Not that this should be a concern judging by Tuesday night. Milner’s performance against a team who had beaten Barcelona last time out was good enough to earn him a 7.5 rating from the notoriously sniffy Gazzetta dello Sport, below only Mohamed Salah and Roberto Firmino. And yet there is still an element of double-take to Milner’s presence as a key part of the finest attacking display at this stage of the Champions League since Bayern’s World Cup winners-in-waiting walked through Barcelona’s era-defining club team five years ago.

Perhaps the most intriguing part of the current Milner Supremacy is that there are no obvious changes to his game. This is not an act of alchemy, the dramatic discovery of some hidden superpower by Professor Klopp, wheeling himself in through the conservatory doors, cranium throbbing. At Anfield Milner was simply himself once again, a footballer without a turn of pace, with no eye-catching technical skills, or obvious extreme qualities beyond the vital ones of intelligence, stamina and versatility.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest James Milner and Jordan Henderson, pictured closing in on Roma’s Radja Nainggolan, provide a vital element of calm behind Liverpool’s freewheeling attack. Photograph: DigitalSouthSHM/Rex/Shutterstock

As Liverpool wrestled with Roma’s power and craft in the opening 20 minutes Milner was diligent and compact. As Liverpool surged into that annihilating Red Zone midway through the half Milner was diligent and compact. As Roma scored two late goals Milner was still diligent and compact, not to mention a little unlucky to concede a late penalty.

He remains Milner the mule, an endearingly dogged, biddable figure, approaching each box-to-box shift like a plucky Soviet tractor steadily ploughing its way to the horizon and back again. Alongside the more deep-lying version of Henderson he provides a vital element of stillness at the heart of this attacking whirl of a team. Milner knows where to stand, where to cover, is free of the kind of creative ego that might lead him galloping into the wrong part of the pitch.

His success points to the best part of Liverpool’s fine run, to the primacy of team and system that has so many players in this XI performing to their maximum capacity in bespoke, and perhaps untransferable tactical roles. Just as Roberto Firmino is the perfect Klopp centre‑forward, with no need to measure him against others doing other jobs in other teams, so the presence of Milner-Henderson at the peak of European club football points to the importance of balance over starrier qualities.

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In isolation Henderson+Milner might look a pretty ordinary collection of footballing attributes. But just as Klopp has talked about needing everyone to push the train, the players just component parts, so Milner and Henderson are the perfect piston engine behind the whistles and sparks and steam of that eye-catching attack. This is probably the best explanation for those assist stats too, a sign not of individual brilliance but of a functioning and indeed highly specialised team. Milner’s job in that midfield three is to close the space, to get the ball and to give it to the people who score the goals, something he has done with great efficiency.

Should Liverpool make it to Kiev no doubt some will suggest Milner might be tempted from international retirement, that a midfield two that can perform at such a level might just be England’s best bet in Russia. This would be to misunderstand the best parts of Milner’s success in the Champions League. Were England looking to replicate the Liverpool style, to play fast-pressing shock‑metal football then it might well be an ideal fit. But England play slowly under Gareth Southgate. This is lounge-jazz football, a carefully geared soft-metal style that requires if anything a little acceleration in midfield.

Instead the lessons of late Milner are the primacy of the system, the value of versatility and those hard‑won game-management skills. And beyond that of a player who, like a footballing version of late‑career Johnny Cash, is fashionable once again simply by walking at the same speed, doing the same things, waiting for the right team, the right moment to take shape around him.