Liverpool FC Forum

[Reg]

Liverpool at the crossroads: will it be greatness or disaster

April 2, 2008

There is a reason that, as Steven Gerrard observes, the best teams in Europe fear being paired with Liverpool. They are close. Really close. Indeed, Liverpool may be as near as a group of players can get to becoming a truly outstanding side without actually getting there.

They are the team that Fabio Capello, the England manager, would like to have: a classic leader of the line, a solid centre, pace and wit on the flanks and Gerrard playing as he does for, well, Liverpool. Rafael Benítez has Liverpool set up to play the system Capello demands, with the type of players he requires, and when it works - as it most frequently does in European games - they are the model of modern efficiency, almost Italian by design despite the Iberian influence.

And unless the two cowboys in charge of the club sort their problems out, the whole thing could go to hell even before the start of next season.

That is what makes Liverpool so frustrating. The club contrive to be, at once, on the brink of greatness and disaster. That a team so accomplished against the toughest opponents in Europe should still be looking over their shoulder in fourth place in the Barclays Premier League is laughable. Everton and the rest should be specks on the horizon by now.

The myth about Liverpool's success in Europe is that it is a fluke. Certain aspects, maybe. To go three goals down to AC Milan in a Champions League final playing as badly as Liverpool did in Istanbul before coming back to draw 3-3 - while still not playing particularly well, just with better shape and self-belief - will never be repeated without influence from the Almighty.

Yet the rest of it, the deserved victories over Inter Milan, Juventus, Chelsea and Barcelona, the capacity to find reserves of resolve in the tightest corners, happens too frequently to be merely the work of the Fates. If it was that easy for a failing team to raise their game in the Champions League, they would all do it.

Valencia, for instance. This has been a poor season for them, stranded in mid-table, no chance of making the Champions League next season. Still, big clubs such as that, with experienced players and strong European pedigree, should be able to put matters right on one front.

Well, no, actually. Valencia finished last in their Champions League group, having won a single match in six and recorded home and away defeats to Rosenborg. Same with Werder Bremen, who are fifth in the Bundesliga. They finished five points adrift of the woeful Olympiacos in group C. Lazio, eleventh in Serie A, were bottom.

What Liverpool have achieved by reaching two Champions League finals in three seasons (plus the last 16 in 2005-06 and now the last eight and counting) is an indication that there is a fine team in there waiting to break out. It may not have looked that way at Old Trafford last month as Liverpool were outplayed, but Benítez is two or three players away from giving Manchester United a real run for their money.

Signing Daniel Alves, the right back at Seville, would be a start. He was linked to Liverpool two summers ago and at the start of the season was courted by Chelsea. When the West London club bought Juliano Belletti from Barcelona instead, Alves was angry that José María del Nido, the Seville president, had priced him out of the market and a war of words broke out, swiftly curtailed by the untimely death of Antonio Puerta, the Seville player. Feeling it important that all were viewed as united at a tragic time, Alves stopped agitating for a move. This summer, however, he may feel a proper period of respect has passed and with Seville's moment in the sun perhaps at an end - they have slumped to sixth after finishing third last year - he could look to follow Juande Ramos, the former Seville coach, to the Premier League.

Alves has the potential to be a revelation at Anfield because Benítez has his team mapped out in the modern way that thickens the middle and attacks from the flanks. It is the style that Capello seeks and explains why his England team did not function in France, lacking the pace to cause a threat from wide. Benítez's frequent changes have made a first XI hard to pin down, but the manager is at last beginning to arrive at a best team, or at least a favoured pattern of play: 4-2-3-1, like England, but with players wholly suited to their roles.

Benítez likes a back four with two disciplined central midfield players guarding, a passer such as Xabi Alonso or Lucas Leiva and a scrapper to break up the play in Javier Mascherano, the best in the business at present, despite his aberration at Old Trafford. He has also located Gerrard's impact position - in the centre, behind Fernando Torres - and they have excelled as a partnership. This means he can play Ryan Babel on one flank as a genuinely quick winger who is also capable of getting up in support, as Cristiano Ronaldo does for United, and Dirk Kuyt on the other. Kuyt is maligned in some quarters yet does an unselfish job for his team, is strong physically and has good positional sense when coming inside to support Torres.

What Alves would bring is a fast, overlapping wide presence, presumably on Kuyt's side, meaning that Liverpool could attack with pace down both flanks while remaining padlocked defensively. When the full back breaks forward, one central defender shuffles across to cover and the holding player drops in.

Brazil have played like this for years. Indeed, few teams have the most creative players operating in a central midfield two these days - they start wide or “in the hole” because it makes them harder to pick up. For the same reason, some strikers peel off to the flank to come back in again, as Thierry Henry did with Arsenal. Why stand next to the central defender? Why try to hack your way through central midfield areas that are hopelessly congested?

If Benítez could add a full back of Alves's calibre to his side, all that would be left to do is strengthen the squad. A lack of depth is what has put the brakes on Arsenal's title challenge and it is no shock that the past three championships have gone to the clubs, United and Chelsea, where the pool of players is deepest.

United are not the same without Ronaldo or Wayne Rooney, Chelsea without Didier Drogba or Frank Lampard, Arsenal without Cesc Fàbregas, but Liverpool often drop off the radar if certain players are not selected (Mascherano, as much as Torres and Gerrard) and no team can sustain a campaign with that degree of vulnerability. In the summer, Benítez must work on back-up, because Liverpool's present squad cannot cut it.

This is why the boardroom split between Tom Hicks and George Gillett Jr is so harmful. At the Emirates Stadium tonight, if Arsenal's board of directors want a lesson in what cannot be allowed to happen if Arsène Wenger's young side are to build on the many positives of this season, they have only to look at the two American owners of Liverpool, sitting at opposite ends of the room like sulking children at a birthday party.

Gillett's ill-judged radio interview last Friday, in which he was openly hostile to his partner, even brought a growl of discontent from Rick Parry, the Liverpool chief executive, who has valiantly tried to make sense of their excesses until now. Parry's admission that the rift between Hicks and Gillett and the continued uncertainty surrounding the sale of the club to Dubai International Capital is “not conducive to long-term managing and planning” is the closest he has come to losing his rag publicly and he could be forgiven if he marches into the boardroom tonight and bangs their heads together. That is if he can get a ticket - the warring Americans have apparently snaffled 20 of them for their respective entourages.

That Benítez is on the brink of real achievement makes the estrangement of Hicks and Gillett more damaging. If the manager cannot make the necessary strides this summer, there is a danger the moment will be lost. Towers of strength in defence are not replaced easily and Jamie Carragher will turn 31 next season while Sami Hyypia is 35 in October. It may be too late in two or three years' time.

The bigger worry is that Benítez will grow frustrated and return to Spain, where, as a supreme tactician in Europe, he must be appealing to Real Madrid and Barcelona. If Benítez walks, the entire structure becomes vulnerable. For so many at the club, not least Torres and Mascherano, the appeal of playing in England while communicating with a Spanish-speaking manager at a very Spanish club is significant.

Gerrard, too, may become disillusioned with stagnation, particularly if a leading rival dangles the carrot of a starting role in the central midfield position he loves and will never get under the pragmatic Benítez. This is the doomsday scenario. The alternative is that Benítez is provided with the finances to finish what he has started, spends wisely and Liverpool bypass the other also-ran positions to jump directly from nowhere to first. He will have to take greater risks than he likes in big matches, but this is what champions do.

And that is the real paradox of Liverpool Football Club. Not that a fourth-placed team could win the Champions League, but that the same group of players could be so close to ascending the summit while simultaneously hanging from a cliff edge by their fingertips.

[The Manhattan Project]

He's right that we are only a few key players away from greater success.

Draws have killed us this season, not defeats.

And he's right about the ownership thing too. That Gillett interview was the death blow to the American partnership.

[woof woof !]

Benítez is two or three players away from giving Manchester United a real run for their money.

Bang a friggin' Gong, we've been two or three players away for the past four seasons.

[maguskwt]

good read... but i don't agree with Gillett's interview being 'ill-judged'... in fact i think it's good for the club's ownership problem...

[66-1112520797]

Benítez is two or three players away from giving Manchester United a real run for their money.

Bang a friggin' Gong, we've been two or three players away for the past four seasons.

Its not about the players all the time, I think the reporter missed the most important part.

The manager.

Yes "we may be a coule of players short    again' but unless the manager can learn from his mistakes and starts picking a more or less settled team, new signings wont help one IOTA. Especially if their in and out of the team (like the okey cokey cokey) at the begining of the season.

[spion]

Yeah we're Alaves, Kaka, Messi & Lucio away from greatness.

[Toffeehater]

good article , read it earlier today but did not comment on it

Yes we are 2 or 3 players away , a quality full back , a second striker and a winger who can play on either wing .

[SouthCoastShankly]

I normally click away when I get the smallest of whiffs that Martin Samuel has written an article. I used to hate the way he arselicked all the London clubs.

But recently his opinions have been far more balanced and as such his writing is far more appealing.