Sir Alex You’re Completely Wrong, Steven Gerrard Is A “Top, Top Player”

Of the various media-ready snippets that were yesterday frantically divulged from Alex Ferguson’s new book, one of the more contentious was the former Manchester United manager’s belittling of Liverpool skipper and brow-furrower extraordinaire Steven Gerrard.

‘I’m one of the few who felt Gerrard was not a top, top player,’ the Scot sagely imparts, as reported by theThe Telegraph – a claim which warrants at the very least dissection and, in this instance at least, refutation. Assuming the Ferguson is not simply being provocative – as if! – how any objective watcher of football can bear witness to Gerrard’s career and fail to place him in the category of elite-level footballer is pure and undiluted folly.

Now, the pros, cons, doubts and distinctions of Gerrard’s game have been subject to a seemingly endless stream of debate amongst all and sundry for years now. And that’s fine – debate is good, and besides, Gerrard is an imperfect and flawed player. But that isn’t to say that he has not proven himself a consistently glorious, breathtaking one since his first outing in Liverpool red 15 years ago.

What tends to be the foremost accusation of Gerrard from his critics is, in itself, a perfectly legitimate one: that he lacks the positional and tactical discipline needed of the finest midfielders. That the absence of any self-restraint from Gerrard harms the shape and structure of his side, and in so doing leaves pockets of space ripe for exploitation by his opposition.

Steven Gerrard Tackles v Newcastle

It’s a criticism which has been compounded by the emerging trends of recent years, specifically, the level to which geometric tactical analysis has infiltrated the mainstream, meaning that, to the sillier football-watchers, the nuances of positional play often take a greater precedent than is warranted – Yes, he might have scored a screamer and single-handedly dragged his side to three utterly undeserved points, but could you believe the way he kept isolating his midfield partner!

In reality, it is certainly true that Gerrard’s indiscipline has frequently been a pitfall – not only presenting a long-standing conundrum for his various managers but often extra defensive work amongst his team-mates. For England watchers, his inability to form a partnership with Frank Lampard tends to be dragged tediously to the table at this point, as if it is a great astonishment that two men who perform the same essential function end up getting in each other’s way when placed within the team.

But all this complaining is to ignore the flip side: Gerrard’s inability to sit tight has also been a harnessed as a weapon of mass destruction. When, as has happened on a good few occasions, a manager happens upon a formula that allows rampancy from his talisman, Gerrard’s disorderliness becomes magnificently lethal.

Station him on the right of a midfield anchored by Xabi Alonso and Momo Sissoko, tell him to go out there and tear his opponents apart, and there results speak for themselves. That was the 2005/06 season, when he was a right-sided player in nothing other than name, and during which he ran riot. Gerrard discarded the idea of tactical rigidity, instead delivering 23 goals, the PFA Player of the Year award, and that FA Cup Final.

Three years later, a similar occurrence: this time Gerrard is let loose centrally, with Javier Mascherano his sentry alongside Alonso. Don’t worry about positioning, pal, just go mad, was the essence of Rafa Benitez’s instructions. Gerrard’s partnership with Torres that season was electrifyingly, ruthlessly effective, and the captain finished with 24 goals, was named the Football Writers’ Player of the Year, and took his side to within four points of the league title.

Even when his side’s set-up wasn’t arranged to indulge Gerrard’s brilliance, his supposed unruliness bore invaluable gifts. Gerard Houlier, for example, had little complaint when his captain turned up on the left wing in the final minute at The Valley in April of 2003, twisting the blood of two defenders before squeezing home a 91st-minute winner from the most insolent of angles. That was merely one of countless times in which Gerrard looked at around at his team-mates of the time – the Traores and the Biscans and the Dioufs and the Cheyrous – and decided to dispense with positional discipline in favour of supplying his side an unmerited win.

But hey, if Ferguson’s definition of a ‘top, top player’ is merely dependent on an abundance of tactical restraint, then I guess Gerrard can have few complaints about his criticism.

On top of the positional question, there also seems to be a myth in existence (and it is a myth – but more on that shortly) that Gerrard is only capable of the game’s more thunderous, grandiose technical skills. That somehow, the fact that Gerrard has spent years routinely burying blistering long-rangers and completing sweeping 30-yard passes acts as proof of his inability to perform football’s more subtle requirements.

Again, we can point to a quintessentially present-day reading of the sport as having inflated this criticism. With the recent dominance of Guardiola’s Barcelona has come the rise, amongst fans, of the pointed appreciation of the understated. The metronomic precision-passing of Xavi Hernandez, the deft through-balls of Andres Iniesta, the quiet attack-snuffing of Sergio Busquets. These have all been fawned over to the point that opposing means are often seen as lesser, as crude or vulgar or ostentatious. It’s nonsense, obviously – tiki-taka is all well and good, but a towering header or thumping, in-off-the-bar screamer not only present their own, perfectly legitimate, spectacle, but also help to win football matches.

Gerrard, of course, tends to deal in such grand gestures. Slide rule passes, nuanced flicks and noiseless interceptions have, historically, been shunned in favour of surging forward gallops, crashing goalward strikes and bone-shuddering slide-tackles.

Have these methods been any less effective? Well, if, for example, someone turned back time and stationed a peak-of-their-powers Xavi or Iniesta in the centre of Liverpool’s midfield in place of Steven Gerrard for those games against Olympiacos in 2005, against AC Milan four months later, or against West Ham at the Millennium Stadium in 2006, would they do a finer job at delivering victory? The answer doesn’t need stating. Over the years, Gerrard has operated on his own booming terms, and has done so with inarguable success.

And hey, Gerrard may not deal in subtlety as regularly as some of his peers, but that’s not to say that he can’t execute a deft display of technique when needed. Look at the way he twisted his body to sending the ball arcing in a perfect parabola over a helpless Marseille goalkeeper a few years back, or his left-footed dinkthat sailed over Tim Howard to open the scoring in the Merseyside derby two seasons ago.

And, despite these long-standing criticisms of Gerrard’s game, Brendan Rodgers’ minor relocation of his captain to a slightly deeper-lying role has also brought about a previously unseen level of positional understanding from Gerrard, as well as a new-found appreciation of a more refined range of passing – punctuated, naturally, with the odd raking long ball and brutal goalward bludgeon. His embracing of the more modest arts may be a tad overdue, but, if only to prove wrong his naysayers, it’s now growing with every outing.

Steven Gerrard Passes v Newcastle (90% Pass Accuracy)

A ‘top, top player’? Make up your own mind. But it’s a phrase that, in the eyes of many, can be added alongside ‘loyalty’ to a list of terms that Alex Ferguson does not know the meaning of.