Striker frustration at Liverpool
Posted by Akzoony in Liverpool, Peter Crouch, Rafa Benitez | 14 March 2006
Liverpool’s poor performance in front of goal has been for a while now one of the main topics of discussion in the pubs up and down the country. Personally I think there are many reasons for it and I will go into more of these another time on this site. For now though, I thought I’d discuss what in my opinion is the most obvious issue, our much maligned strike force:
Raphael Benitez specialises in analysing statistics in order to show a players worth, and this -in part- leads to his continued insistence that Morientes and Crouch are both performing to a very high standard. Both are adding a great deal to the balance of the side and the natural flow of Liverpool’s game, but it is the lack of finishing that is causing concern.
The problem is twofold. Peter Crouch was bought last summer to frustrate other teams as part of a 4-5-1 formation to solve our problem of losing tricky away games, not to be a staple in the side.
A fully fit Morientes was then expected to play his favourite role and support a predatory Djibril Cisse as the main strike partnership. This combination seemed to be developing well both in pre-season friendlies as well as the early rounds of the champion’s league and lead to Cisse giving a very good return in goals per appearances.
Unfortunately once the Premiership season commenced it quickly became obvious that Djibril was not yet able to play to the level required, consistently enough for this to work. Now this may seem harsh as the lad has a great attitude and clearly loves the club, but his style of play just doesn't compliment the type of football we are trying to instil at Liverpool.
Despite my words he is a good striker and he will prove a lot of his doubters wrong if he moves on (as is expected) in the summer. However to be effective he needs a team to sit deep behind him, enabling him to perch on the shoulder of defenders and beat them with his pace ala Marseilles.
Unfortunately this style is not one that Rafa is willing to implement as it is too easy to defend against, and too one-dimensional for a Liverpool team that wants to be challenging for top honours (and let’s be fair it wasn't a whole lot of fun when we played like that in Houlliers later years).
This along with an unsuccessful bid for Dirk Kuyt and Michael Owen in the transfer window meant that our ideal partnership was not going to work and a short term solution had to be found.
This lead to Peter Crouch playing a role that we had never meant for him; sitting alongside Morrientes. While the quality of both players cannot be questioned neither have the ability to finish the chances provided by the other. Both like to play deep and feed off of an old fashioned centre forward and as such any chances through the middle of the park tend to be laid off to the wings, or passed back into midfield and the momentum is lost.
I have to admit I first drafted this article a while ago and at the time I left my thoughts about our main three strikers there, however sadly since then I’ve had a change of heart:
I'm sure along with most Red's I was jumping for joy at the news last year that we had signed Fernando Morientes from Real. Especially since we had no fit strikers at the time. And although he failed to provide the goals we needed I never lost faith. I believed (and still believe) that he wasn't fully fit, needed to adapt to the Premiership, and his various knocks and stomach injury had just lead to a slow start. Unfortunately at some point during the Benfica match that hope died. I still believe he is a great player (the few times this year ive had the pleasure of watching him at Anfield I've seen some of the best touches ive ever seen in a Red shirt), however for whatever reason I don’t think he's going to recapture his best form in a Red shirt.
Personally I believe that if he had had a prolific goal scorer to play alongside regularly and build a partnership with we would have seen another Morientes.
The one striker that provides me with the most joy and some confusion is our late Christmas present Robbie Fowler.
I was as happy as anyone when he returned as I grew up idolising the man, and am very happy he is back where he should be - in a red shirt. He has now played 7 games for us in one capacity or another and had the ball in the back of the net three times (although only one was on-side and that was wrongly dis-allowed). Not a bad return since the Charlton match was his first full 90 minutes since May.
All of the signs for are good, and I fully believe that as he gets fitter and gets more games under his belt he will start getting more goals (hopefully starting at Fulham).
My confusion stems from the fact that buying Robbie doesn't seem to fit into what I believe Benitez is trying to build with Liverpool, and I have my suspicions that the move may not have had as much to do with him as we have been lead to believe. Robbie will at best only come into form for the last month (as Rafa has previously stated) and I’m not sure he will be able to show he can do enough in that time to convince Rafa to give him a new contract. I really hope I’m wrong about this one as I’m sure that God will bring as much in terms of passion and experience behind the scenes as he does joy to us in the stands!
As I mentioned at the start, I don’t believe our low goal scoring tally is all down to the strikers, indeed I’m not sure it is even mostly down to them. There are some obvious gaps in the Liverpool line-up that need plugging before it can work as it should, and our unnaturally long season has certainly started to take its toll, and I will talk about these things another time.
The most important thing however is I will always support all of our strikers as long as they wear a Red Shirt. I have no issues with their efforts and if any or all move on in the summer I wish them luck.
YNWA
Comments
i have something for rafa for our team that rafa must sign kuyt,terzga,alves and simo.they are support liverpool problem that we see in the friendly mach.
thank you
