Steven Gerrard is a victim of Liverpool’s squad more than he is his own age
By Seb Stafford-Bloor
Posted on November 25, 2014
We’re really, really fond of scapegoating in English football.
It’s easy to understand why: blaming a single player for a team’s ailments is the quickest and easiest way of explaining poor form. If you attribute everything that is going wrong to just one individual, then you’re spared the hardship of a more complex explanation.
Brendan Rodgers’ job is very much secure according to Liverpool Echo journalist James Pearce
Liverpool are in a troubling condition at the moment. The side and their manager are caught in a perfect storm of dissipating confidence, ill-fitting components and injuries, for which there is no instant remedy.
Don’t let anybody hear you say that, though.
In the beginning, there was Mario Balotelli. From a critics’ perspective, the Italian arrived at Anfield at exactly the right moment. His arrival coincided with the beginning of the current slump, therefore the accepted logic was that he was to blame for it. It was very neat and very tidy. He was a gift to the lazy.
Balotelli allowed us to ignore all kinds of problems at Liverpool. He is such a polarising figure and it is so easy to pick flaws in his game, that the temptation was to cast him as a footballing Chernobyl: here he was with his apathy and his indifference, infecting all of those around him.
Certainly, the Italian is as stylistically different to either Luis Suarez and Daniel Sturridge as it is possible to find and his inclusion in the side did create something of a tactical ellipsis, but he was characterised as the villain too quickly and too eagerly.
He doesn’t run. He doesn’t work hard enough. He doesn’t care.
He’s the problem.
Balotelli
It’s not a coincidence that in the period following Balotelli’s removal from the first-team, the critique of Steven Gerrard has intensified. From his age and declining capabilities being a mild concern two months ago, now his frailty has become a glaringly obvious concern that apparently only a fool could overlook.
All of a sudden, the problem is Gerrard. Remove him from the side and the clouds over Anfield will vanish.
Sound familiar? Again, it’s simplification.
Rather than stripping Gerrard of his on-field captaincy, shunting him into a coaching role, and imploring Brendan Rodgers to have that ‘difficult conversation’ with a Merseyside deity, maybe this situation requires cooler heads?
Steven Gerrard is not a defensive-midfielder, he never has been. The faults that are being laid at his door now are those that he has always possessed. He is a proactive player rather than a reactive one and his value has always been in what he does with the ball rather than without it. When he was younger, he may very well have been a more regular ball-winner and he may also have been more reliable at tracking opponents’ attacking runs – shortcomings which are both now highlighted on a weekly basis – but neither were ever his raison d’etre in the Liverpool side.
Gerrard doesn’t need to be dropped and neither does he need to be ushered into retirement, he needs to be accommodated better.
His lifespan at Anfield is probably short. He’ll almost certainly sign a contract extension before too long, but he will likely play for another eighteen months at most. In that time, he will retain an obvious value – but only if he’s used correctly.
Gerrard’s ability to pass the ball is unmatched at Liverpool. Neither Jordan Henderson, Lucas Leiva, Emre Can nor Joe Allen have an equivalently diverse distribution range and, as such, the side would be worse off if Gerrard was marginalised.
Unfortunately, Brendan Rodgers lacks a really strong defensive-midfield and, hence, is without the ability to compensate for Gerrard’s deficiencies in his current role. The former England captain isn’t hopeless without the ball, but he does need to be partnered with a specialist – a destroyer, someone whose only role is to shield a defence and retrieve possession.
If that player existed at Anfield, Liverpool would have the security to benefit from Gerrard’s distribution and vision without it being a perilous trade-off with defensive fragility.
Is Gerrard less influential than he was five years ago? Of course he is, but that doesn’t mean he no longer possesses any value. Look around the football landscape and you will find plenty of examples of aging possession-orientated players who are still performing at a very high level in the middle of the pitch – and, right next to them, you will see a facilitating teammate.
Would Xavi Hernandez have survived as long as he has at Barcelona without Sergio Busquets? Would Italy have still picked Andrea Pirlo at the last World Cup had Cesare Prandelli not also been able to select Daniele De Rossi? The preservation of declining-yet-valuable players is a balancing act.
Read more at
http://www.squawka.com/news/steven-gerrard-is-a-victim-of-liverpools-squad-more-than-he-is-his-own-age/229500#oEhkmGjQUQbq7wk0.99
