DID you get it? Yes. You’re right. In the weekend that 50 Shades of Cack is released, I’ve decided to go back to the golden age of porn for my title. Great Google opportunity there. All about increasing the page count, guys.
The O then. The O’s. Let’s talk about the O’s. Let’s talk Options, opinions and optimisms, shall we? (See, I don’t just throw this stuff together, there’s thought and planning and everything).
We’ve seen the options for about the last six weeks now but Tuesday night — glorious, wonderful, beautiful, impassioned Tuesday night — flagged them up in the greatest way yet. Tuesday night we saw what we are, what we’re capable of, saw the post-Gerrard future and thought, you know what? We’re fine. We’re going to be fine. We’re going to be more than fine, we’re going to be sodding incredible.
Can anybody remember the last time they saw all three substitutes work to such fantastic effect? We saw potential being achieved, we saw rebirth for at least one and — let’s say this now — more likely two players. Rodgers does rebirth. Sometimes it’s forced on him by lack of options, sometimes it may have always been planned that way but whichever it is, he embraces it. He brings them back in. Sakho. Sakho is rebirth personified. There was no way back from that derby walk out. Until there was. Until there was and it was glorious. Rebirth. There was no coming back for Lucas. Napoli beckoned. Until there was the coming back, until the set aside and forgotten suddenly became the vital, the key.
Lallana for Markovic? Easy call. A thoughtful, tricky player (hell of a turn on young Adam, swivels like nobody on the planet and I swear to God he’s a damn sight faster than everybody gives him credit for) for a pacy, tricky player. Adam unlocks things. He’s a glorious, graceful scalpel of a player. He changes things. Give, move, receive, move, cross, Mario. Sorted. Lovely footballer. A £25m substitute for a £20m winger. Two new players both working out fine, thanks.
Mario for a tiring Danny? Sturridge may not have scored but God he worked. His presence gives defences all kinds of nightmares to think about. His dropping to hold the ball gives space to Phil and Lazar and Jordon — space to caper and torment and create and torture in roughly equal amounts. And when he went it gave Mario the chance of rebirth. Gave him the role he could play until the end of the season. Swear to God, I saw Mario Balotelli chase a ball into the corner, saw him chase lost causes. I know I saw him score. And the reaction? Incredulity that it had finally happened? Joy for the lad. Support. Proper support. He may not have worked out. He may not work out but for that moment we were with him. A £16m substitute for a £15m forward.
The key though. The substitution that will be the most important substitution of that game in the long term. Steven Gerrard. I’m coming back to Steven, that’s the opinion bit. Gerrard ‘tires’ (Gerrard’s hammy goes) and Brendan doesn’t do the obvious, doesn’t do the safe, doesn’t do what he would have done in dark, dark November. He doesn’t bring on Joe Allen to shore up the midfield and hope and hold. He brings on Dejan Lovren. He does what every single person in the ground would do and he pushes Emre, with his speed and his physique and his sheer desire to lead a charge, THE charge, any charge into the middle of the park and he shows us what’s coming. HE shows us this Saturday and he shows us next season and he shows us what we’ll hopefully see until I’ve turned sixty (Jesus). He shows us Emre Can running a Liverpool team and Bayern Munich sit there scratching their heads and trying to figure out how they let THAT happen. First option, the buyback clause? Coulda, woulda, shoulda.
And very quietly, at the back, Dejan Lovren does very little wrong. No rash dashes, no fighting his other defenders for the same ball. Weeks, months, on the sideline, watching, thinking, figuring out. And maybe, just maybe, Brendan’s just done with Dejan what he did with big Si. “See them? Just do that? Okay?”. Dejan Lovren’s Liverpool career starts here. Started Tuesday. Onwards, upwards etc.
And we revise our opinion of Dejan. And we don’t use Joe Allen. Which means that Joe’s out of the firing line and doesn’t have to listen to the groans every time a ball is less than perfect. We liked Joe last year. Liked him when he wasn’t there. Liked the fact that he made things tick. We don’t like him this year, all he does is make things tick. We do this. All of us. There’s always one player that we won’t take to, that can’t do enough. It’s human nature. It’s also human nature that we change that player every so often. They’ve all been through it. Allen. Henderson. Lucas. Skrtel. Johnson. Mario. Mignolet. They’re all the weak link in the team at one time or another for one fan or another. Gerrard.
Gerrard. The best example I’ve ever seen of a player dividing opinion. Steven’s over. He’s finished. Can’t do it any more. We want him to lift the FA Cup but we’d prefer it if he didn’t actually play until about the 90th minute of the final if we can help it.
Can I offer up a contentious opinion? (I like offering up contentious opinions at the best of times but this one’s a doozy).
I thought Steven Gerrard was absolutely magnificent on Tuesday night.
Sharp intake of breath there? There’s some righteous fury coming my way. I know this.
The thing is, I’m not alone. I’m a grown up now, I sit in the Main Stand. My Kop days are over. The blokes around me were in agreement. The guys I spoke to at half time were in agreement. Gerrard’s best game of the season. Moving freely, chasing down holes in the midfield, moving the ball forward, creating, cleaning up. Covering for Jordan Henderson a lot of the time; Jordan making ALL the wrong decisions, not challenging, backing off when he should push forward, moving the ball carelessly, making the wrong pass.
Our kid though. Our kid still sits on the Kop. Meeting in the cold afterwards for that walk across the park I was stunned, literally stunned (well, not ‘literally’, that would be ridiculous) to find that he’d seen a different game to me. That Gerrard had apparently been appalling. That Henderson was the better of the two. That my call for Henderson to be subbed (for Lovren to come on and Can move forward – come on, I got that bit right) was apparently absurd. Twitter went with our kid. One of us is wrong. I refuse to accept it’s me. I know what I saw. Or maybe it’s just a matter of opinions, maybe everything’s subjective and there’s no right answer here.
The joy is, we have options. We can lose Gerrard, lose Lucas, give Sturridge a rest, not have Raheem anywhere near the field and still put three past a very, very (best team to come to Anfield this season) Spurs side.
Options. Options all over the place. Which can only be grounds for optimism.
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Pics: David Rawcliffe-Propaganda
There’s a wonderful exuberance about our team that goes beyond last season. It’s based on youth and playing without fear. That fear that we started the season with has all but gone. It’s personified in Can. He’s the catalyst for the rebirth of the 2013/14 team and adding to it. Unabashed power and skill. The future. Our future. Excited? Words fail!!!
As for Steven. He gave one of his most disciplined central midfield performances in years. Nothing outlandish. No surging sorties into the opposition’s heart. But controlled. At one point he tracked Lamella for forty yards at full tilt and never gave an inch. BUT…..his hamstring didn’t like it. He’s big and fucking hard. But he’s not cut out for box to box anymore. MLS will be more forgiving.
Who could possibly fill the void left by our greatest ever player? Emre Can can!!!! Emre Can will.
The future’s bright. The future’s ours. The future’s being shaped by a team of players who could carry our club forward for the next decade. Can’t wait………
Just love the thought of Bayern and Inter looking at Can and Coutinho and thinking… ‘Aw no…. feck! (Scheisse! And whatever the Italian is) – and their fans firing off ‘Sack the Transfer Committee’ posts.
Ssshhh, Ian, you can’t write stuff like that about Gerrand round these here parts. You have to be “sad” to see players on the opposition go past SG (because players on the opposition only ever go past Gerrard and no other midfielders in the EPL) and when they do it can’t be because some of those players on the opposition are actually quite good at going past people on occasion; no, it has to be because SG’s “legs have gone” and he is in fact only marginally more mobile than Steven Hawking with a flat battery.
Remember also that no other LFC player has a hope of playing to his potential if SG is in the team given they each have to run “90 gazillion” additional yards every 45 seconds to make up for Gerrard’s emphysema.
I just wish that guy would take his 600 appearances and dozen goals this season and fuck off leaving the job of scoring to Hotshot Henderson et al.
Did I mention how “sad” it is?
Sorry Ian, Brownie, but I’m with your son. Was happy to proved wrong last season when Rodgers found him the quartista role, but technically I still think we are a worse side when he is playing these days, penalties aside. I have said this before, but I think it is very hard to judge who is playing better out of a centre midfield partnership just by watching one game in isolation. Either they play well as team, or they don’t as a team, because the spaces you can take up are dependent on the positioning of your partner. Looking at the way we play when he is in there, as compared to the Lucas/Henderson and maybe the Can/Henderson (although it’s early days) partnerships, we look no where near as solid. I suspect that this partly down to his legs but partly just how he has always been, always looking to get on the front foot rather than work closely with his partners.
That said, I thought he had one of his better games on Tuesday apart from the two goals (second was a clean tackle but definitely not one he needed to risk, especially given eriksens form of late). I also think that a large part of the credit for the team spirit we are showing should be given to his leadership, which has been great over the last two years.
I agree Tom. I do think SG should be applauded for the team spirit. He is such a relaxed soul. He is great in front of the camera to the media.He makes me proud to be a Scouser and a Liverpool fan.
We love you Stevie. YNWA.
Great article Ian
Quite right Tom. The Lucas/Henderson axis gives us rhythm and control. Tuesday’s game was far too open for me, a reminder of last season’s football sans Suarez to bail us out. Last season was great, don’t get me wrong. It was without doubt the most fun I’ve had as a supporter since the late 70s, but it wasn’t really sustainable was it? Not without Suarez at any rate. We’re far more balanced now, not panicking at every transition, and that can only be a good thing.
Well you’re sort of making my point, Tom. You think Gerrard had one of his better games – now go look at the thread on the article following the Spurs game. Are those comments on Gerrard’s performance fair? Do they accurately describe the performance you saw?
This isn’t about personal player preferences; it’s about a narrative that writes itself. It really doesn’t matter anymore for many on here whether Gerrard’s performances are good, bad or middling…the review is already written before a ball is kicked. You know this when he’s criticised for players going by him but then in the next breath criticised for making a perfectly good tackle to win the ball back from Spurs’ most dangerous midfielder only for the ref to fuck things up.
I’m sure we’ve all got our own anecdotal evidence, but I comfort myself in the knowledge that this Gerrard groupthink in the TAW comments is not mirrored in the opinions of most of the LFC fans I know.
Have to go with your son too Ian. Though it was one of Gerrard’s better performances in the middle there were too many times the play just breezed past him. I don’t think it’s had all that much to do with his age, it comes from playing a natural forward in a position he’s never been great at. I agree with you that all players get passed, it’s just that it seems to happen so easily with Stevie. Fact of the matter is that Spurs had 14 attempts on goal while Stevie was on the pitch, they didn’t have a single one in the 20 remaining minutes. When he’s on the pitch in the middle we hemorage goals.
I was thinking the same thing about Mignolet’s reaction to the second, that he must have been aware that Kane was offside the way he was going on about it. Apart from the big save he also made a fine one-on-one save (which was incorrectly ruled offside) where he was very quick off his line. A remarkable improvement on his early season form. Well in Simon.
Hope you’re right about Lovren, he did seem a lot calmer. The defence seems well-drilled now, so he shouldn’t need to feel as though he has to put fires out all over the pitch. We need to him to come good, we need squad depth.
Hats off to Brendan, he’s finally found the right balance between attack and defence. We’re moving backwards and forwards as a team: it’s a joy to behold and you can see the confidence coursing through the side from back to front. Long may it continue.
Excellent article. I agree with everything except the Gerrard bit (have to side with your kid unfortunately).
Can you please change the text / background colours, was a struggle to read.
The Salmon family opinions! Even the lad is involved now…..wise words from the elder statesman, we are Liverpool