It's coming. Whether it comes tonight against Real Madrid, on Saturday against Chelsea, or at some unspecified point in the season, it's coming. Some time soon, Steven Gerrard is going to get rested. Or rotated. Or, Brendan Rodgers being Brendan Rodgers, will have his priorities recalibrated with a view to, vis-à-vis, the whole pie. Dropped, however you slice it. Not the pie.
Dropping Steven Gerrard might be the right decision at the wrong time
Brendan Rodgers has suggested that his captain may not begin tonight’s game against Real Madrid. Whatever his reasons, it’s a very delicate moment for a manager to drop a club legend.
Clive Brunskill
This thinking of unthinkable has come because Rodgers has hinted heavily, albeit elliptically, to the press in Madrid that his captain may not lead Liverpool out into the Bernabéu this evening:
In Steven's case, if he is playing on Saturday I have to look at what is the priority for him and us. If he played against Newcastle and didn't play tomorrow night you could say that was the priority. Him and I have spoken about that. Three big games, Newcastle, Madrid and then Chelsea.
Time is an implacable force and nobody’s knees last forever. If Rodgers is being straight — “There is no doubt that our priorities are the Premier League and the Champions League, and always in that order” — then it makes perfect sense to play him for 90 minutes against Newcastle, rest him for Real Madrid, then play him against Chelsea Saturday lunchtime. It’s the least winnable fixture of a busy week, and it’s also arguably the least crucial, since second place in the Champions League groups remains alive whatever happens. Though Liverpool fans (particularly those actually in Madrid) might well be justified in feeling a bit narked that the biggest away game in years is being treated like the Europa League. It’s Real Madrid in the Bernabéu in the European Cup. Have as square a go as you can manage.
The alternative is that the resting is in fact a disguised and diplomatic dropping. That Liverpool's manager feels that Liverpool's best midfield doesn't include Steven Gerrard, which is pretty much the first time that's happened since the opposite became true. Rodgers can't tell us, of course, because that would be foolish. Not least because the next question would be: well, why are you going to play him against Chelsea, then? They're quite good as well.
(Third alternative: maybe it’s too simplistic to think in terms of strongest and weakest. Maybe Rodgers feels that there is a blend of midfielders best suited to the particular challenge of Real Madrid that doesn’t feature Gerrard, in a way that the particular challenge of Newcastle did and Chelsea may. Though this would still be something of a demotion for Gerrard: just another player, to be selected or not along with the rest depending on what he can and cannot do.)
If there is a hint of a drop in the resting, then plenty might suggest it's not before time. Watching Gerrard age, there are echoes of Roy Keane and Manchester United in 2005. A team rejigged to compensate for his declining physical presence, yet arguably only leaving him more exposed. The sneaking suspicion, with every game, that the intangible benefits of the captain's presence — experience, drive, status, reputation, nous — is being undermined by the fact that they keep getting caught out of position or in possession.
The reinvention of Steven Gerrard as a defensive midfielder has been, from a narrow perspective, a mixed success. This is because he really isn’t one; he is a footballer whose strengths are largely attacking and largely improvisational. He doesn’t seem to relish the role the way those footballers born to disrupt seem to, the way Javier Mascherano does, and nor does he have the fetishistic devotion to secure and simple distribution of Sergio Busquets. He’s played in his role, but he’s no Makélélé; he might not even be a Lucas Leiva. In purely footballing terms, he’s a star-shaped peg in the squarest hole on the pitch.
But he is still Steven Gerrard, and being Steven Gerrard is still a thing that matters. Not just because he can still take a good free-kick, or because every now and then one of those Hollywood passes finds its target before it finds the touchline. The intangibles of captaincy are real things, albeit harder to find on a heatmap. Keane, simply by being Keane, made everybody else better, and as such his utility went beyond his own contributions. And he stayed in the United side — indeed, had the United side tweaked around him — because Alex Ferguson felt that Keane could retain that external influence even as his own game started to wilt. He was wrong, as it goes, but it wasn’t a stupid idea. There are more to some players than their passing.
For a more successful example, we might perhaps turn to Dave Mackay when he signed for Derby County in 1968. As Brian Clough, his manager, put it: “I kept telling myself I’d nailed it ... I hadn’t just signed a player, I’d recruited a kind of institution.” Though whether Mackay would have been such a transformative influence on Clough’s Derby side had he not also excelled after being converted to a playmaking centre-half is, perhaps, up for debate.
It's not been long since we had some evidence of this. Gerrard's late, fatal contribution to last season's title race will never be forgotten, but it's worth remembering that Liverpool were only in position to slip thanks to a late recovery at Fulham, the second win in their run of eleven. Having trashed Arsenal 5-1 the previous week, Kolo Toure had spent most of the game wearing his boots on the wrong feet, and Liverpool were 2-1 down going into the 70th minute at Craven Cottage, then 2-2 going into the 90th. Gerrard made the first goal, scored the winning penalty, and was generally everything that a late period, past his prime captain should be. Playing well, when others were struggling, and in the process dragging his team along with him.
Of course, Fulham are not Real Madrid and Liverpool this November are not Liverpool last February. The club, as a whole, hasn't just struggled with their on-pitch post-Suárez hangover. They've quickly acquired a wider air of internal dysfunction. Watching Rodgers throw Mario Balotelli under a passing bandwagon, watching Gerrard conduct his contract negotiations through the press, and watching the mysterious transfer committee make its mysterious decisions; all that has been just as weird as watching Dejan Lovren attempt to look like a £20m defender and leader of men.
If Gerrard plays this evening, then all this is rendered academic. But only for the moment. Though the Keane comparison maybe shouldn’t be taken too far — this season probably doesn’t end with Gerrard charging onto LFCTV and calling Lazar Markovic a prick — what’s pretty much certain is that a Gerrard dropping, or resting, or rotation is coming soon. This isn’t necessarily disastrous on the field: there’s a decent midfield to be manufactured from Emre Can, Jordan Henderson, Joe Allen and the rest, and gains in energy and vigour that will go some way to offsetting whatever is lost to the bench.
But unless Liverpool’s form picks up soon, then whenever it happens, it will inevitably be folded into the wider sense that the club is in a bit of a state. What’s really going on here, Brendan? What’s the angle? What does this mean for his new contract? What’s the mood in the dressing room? There’s perhaps never a good moment to drop one of a club’s finest players, but there are definitely better ones. Seismic decisions rock shaky structures. As headaches go, this one could have been much better timed.
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