"When Steve McMahon plays well, I always think that Liverpool will play well." This ultimate compliment from Bob Paisley's bear testament to McMahon's capabilities. McMahon started out as a ball boy at Goodison Park and eventually joined his boyhood heroes Everton. He was a regular for the Blues for three seasons and voted the supporters' player of the year in his debut campaign. When he felt it was time was to move on he chose Aston Villa in a £300,000 deal over Liverpool. He confessed that he didn't dare to do the virtually impossible to move straight from the blue half of Liverpool to the red. His transfer turned out to be a step down as Everton were a club on the rise, winning the League Championship two years after his move while Aston Villa struggled to follow their 1980/81 league triumph. Before McMahon eventually joined Liverpool he had certainly had his tussles with their players. "They set me up. Kenny got me booked and Souey got me sent off," says McMahon of their Anfield battle on 17 September 1983. "They certainly set out to wind me up and they succeeded. They were crafty. I was wound up anyway going back to Merseyside and they did me a treat." Since Souness left Liverpool for Rome in 1984, a playmaker of some force was needed as the Reds lost the title to Everton. When Liverpool came in for McMahon again in September 1985 he wasn't going to reject them again.

Kenny Dalglish took over before the 1985/86 season and McMahon was his first signing. In only his third game McMahon faced Everton at Goodison Park and scored Liverpool's third with a thumping shot that proved to be the winning goal. McMahon was ruthless in the middle of the park putting in strong tackles to say the least. He contributed to the goalscoring as well and displayed sorely-missed leadership qualities in the engine room. McMahon got injured at a crucial stage of the season and the only Englishman in Liverpool's troops at Wembley had to settle for the bench when the Reds beat the Blues in the FA Cup final. He played 50 games in his second season in comparison with 36 in his first and scored no less than 14 goals, but Everton recaptured their crown. McMahon's game prospered in 1987/88 and he came third in the vote for Footballer of the Year as Liverpool shattered their opposition. He was a perfect workhorse for the more glitzy talents of Barnes and Beardsley, though he could conjure up magic on his own. On 16 January 1988 with the score at 0-0 late in the first half a promising Liverpool move appeared to have finished when a pass from Ray Houghton was misdirected and seemed to be heading for the paddock. McMahon was having none of it and chased a seemingly lost cause. At full speed he put his foot on the ball to prevent it from going out of play before careering towards the paddock supporters. Somehow he contrived to stop himself from toppling into the crowd, regained his balance and control of the ball which he then took down the right wing before sliding a brilliant pass across to the onrushing Aldridge who scored the first in a 2-0 victory over Arsenal. 

McMahon picked up his third League Championship in the 1989/90 season. Despite his tough demeanour on the field McMahon escaped a sending-off at Liverpool until he received two reds in a seven month period in 1991. The first one came when he put in a late tackle on Liverpool old boy Howard Gayle receiving a second yellow in an ill-tempered FA Cup clash against Blackburn Rovers in January. The following month McMahon injured his knee after a clash with John Ebbrell in the fifth round of the FA Cup which meant an early end to his season just a few days before Dalglish's resignation. McMahon's second dismissal came in only his third game of the 1991/92 season when he elbowed Luton Town's Philip Gray when preventing him from taking an early free-kick. Later Vinnie Jones claimed McMahon was his "only real rival" in modern day football for the accolade of "hardest man in football". McMahon was never the most popular teammate in the dressing room, but once on the field he had your back.

In November 1991 thirty-year-old McMahon left for Manchester City. McMahon was used to higher standards than were on offer at City at the time yet remained at Maine Road for three years before he was tempted away to become the player-manager of Swindon Town. Although unable to save Town from a second successive relegation, he did steer them to the semi-final stage of the League Cup, where they were defeated by Bolton Wanderers. Swindon won the Division Two title in 1996 but the manager left after a dreadful start to the 1998/99 season, losing five of the opening nine matches. In January 2000 McMahon signed an 18-month contract to manage Blackpool and that contract was later extended. Halfway through the 2003/04 season he tendered his resignation but then bizarrely interrupted the press conference that had been arranged to announce his departure and claimed that he had withdrawn his resignation having talked to his Chairman. He did eventually resign for real just before the end of the 2003/04 season. McMahon became the manager of Perth Glory in Australia early in January 2005 but that job lasted less than a year. Since then like so many other former Liverpool players, he has got involved in what can be called 'media and punditry work' including working for the ESPN Star Sports channel. In September 2011 McMahon was hired to expand Liverpool's brand and scouting into India. The former midfielder is head coach at the facility as a part of the club's ambition to leave its footprint in every continent in the next three years.