Liverpool FC Forum

red37 wrote:Gerrard is a lot of things....most of em good things. He is Liverpool's best player. And he is also the skipper..

That last point is dubiously considered, when you witness the amount of time he seems to expend wasting energy on shrugging his shoulders, pointing his head down to the floor, seeming disinterested and generally having a nark on because he is played in a different position (ie one that is required by the managers asking) than the one he actually prefers. Even though he is both capable and indeed culpable whilst occupying it...

Hs attitude reeks at times. His industry/end product inspires many times...but boy oh boy the lad can sulk like a trooper. Especially it seems against these.

Still above all that, he along with Reina, Carragher and i suspect Pennant will be the difference next week.  They'll have to be.

Bad Bob wrote:As someone who supported Stevie on the right over the last two seasons, I don't say this lightly but I think the Gerrard on the right experiment of 2005-2006 has well and truly run its course.  He was immense from right midfield over many games last season but I can't remember one game this season where he's really had an impact starting out there.

And, as we saw last night, when he's not getting the ball out there, he goes looking for it all over the pitch.  There were times in the first half when he was tracking back to help Riise in the LB position...from RM!!!  Sometimes this allowed him to get on the ball around the centre circle but it was crowded in there and there was no room to do anything.  With Arbeloa needing to stay home to deal with the movement of Cole and Shevchenko, there was no option to spread play out to the right and, thus, we were forced to run everything through Zenden on the left.  Oh how Chelsea must have enjoyed that.

The thing with Stevie is that he NEEDS to be involved.  He needs the play to largely run through him going forward and he needs to be tracking back and tackling in front of our defenders.  For his own mentality, he needs to play centrally.  That's why, even if he's told to play out wide, he nevertheless ends up coming infield for most of the game anyway.  The 'sulky' body language may crop up from time to time when he's out wide but, for me, he's not a serial sulker--rather, he seems to say "feck it" and starts seeking out the ball elsewhere on the pitch, which can work on occasion but often serves merely to disrupt our shape and make us easier to contain.

So, I think Gerrard needs to return to central midfield.  I know that some will say he's just one player and the team comes first but, realistically, he's our best player still by a long chalk and getting him close to peak form does a lot more for the team.  I now believe that we will rarely ever see that peak form from RM because he won't stay put and because teams have sussed out that doubling up on him with a LB and a LM can neutralize our greatest weapon.  So, let's bring Stevie back into the middle and build the team around him there.

What does that mean for other players?  Well, if it's 4-4-2, that means that Alonso, Mascherano and Sissoko will need to be rotated a fair bit more than they have been in the past.  It will also mean that Pennant will need to continue stepping up and doing a job (unless, of course, another RM is brought in this summer).  Of course, we could also opt for a variation of 4-5-1/4-3-3/4-1-4-1 etc. with three CMs.  The key here, I think, is not to push Gerrard too far forward into "the hole."  As the Boro game revealed, he doesn't usually get the space he needs to operate in that area.  He's a different player than a Joe Cole or a Scholes, who can do a great deal of damage just behind the strikers.  Gerrard, I think, does his best work when he comes from deeper positions, filling gaps and running onto balls at full pelt to either unleash a pile-driver from distance (for all of Riise's plaudits for long-range strikes, Gerrard's much more effective because his usually hit the target) or to power into the box, where anything can happen.

So, in response to the original post, I don't think Gerrard had a great game yesterday because he roamed far too much but I do think that yesterday's game should have sounded the death knell for Gerrard at right midfield.

I can't believe it took 18 posts for another "gerrard in the centre" debate to raise it's head again.

i agree with you though. in this game i'd play gerrard central and pennent on the right as we're chasing the game. if we were protecting a lead it'd be a different matter.

the mighty chels wrote:He was immense today, the best liverpool player on the pitch! He gave a 110% and our most dangerous chance came from him.

He went quite in the last 20 minutes, but he played excellent, always winning the ball.



sounds lyk all the over liverpool fans cant see past steven gerrard, 1 man team!

the mighty chels wrote:sounds lyk all the over liverpool fans cant see past steven gerrard, 1 man team!

the mighty chels wrote:He was immense today, the best liverpool player on the pitch! He gave a 110% and our most dangerous chance came from him.

He went quite in the last 20 minutes, but he played excellent, always winning the ball.



sounds lyk all the over liverpool fans cant see past steven gerrard, 1 man team!

JeffJustice wrote:Stevie G works his off every time I see him play. I think having him on the right is madness and I think SG and JM in central midfield next year will blow teams away.
I have to agree to some extent that if Stevie wasn't there, Liverpool would need some more major players brought in to replace such talent.