Why Liverpool should offload Martin Kelly

Martin Kelly

Liverpool have found themselves in such blisteringly good form in recent months that it’s been easy to forget about the considerable number of their squad who have been marginalised almost to the point of exile.

While Luis Suarez, Daniel Sturridge and Raheem Sterling have been merrily going about their business of blitzing opposition defences for fours and fives, the likes of Luis Alberto and Iago Aspas have been watching on forlornly from the dugout, rarely even considered for a time-wasting stoppage-time switch, first-team players in nothing but a name.

Martin Kelly stats

To this list we can also add Martin Kelly – a home-grown defender who, now 23, is surely in serious danger of spending the formative stages of his footballing career playing no football at all. Kelly’s current situation is about as unenviable as that of a professional footballer employed by his boyhood club could be.

His five league appearances this term have all come from the bench and total a little over 100 minutes. With his club now out of both domestic cups and with no European commitments, there’s little to suggest that this rate of outings will increase at any time between now and the season’s end.

It is an inexact science to identify exactly where Kelly lies within the squad’s hierarchy of defenders, but with Daniel Agger, Martin Skrtel, Mamadou Sakho and Kolo Toure all having been regularly selected ahead of the Merseysider in central defence – supposedly his best and best-liked position – it’s fair to say that he is, at the very least, the club’s fifth-choice centre-back. And to be the fifth port of call for a position in which only two are ever needed at once effectively means that a spot on the bench is pretty much as good as could be hoped for.

Kelly can also play at right-back, of course – it was in this slot that he first broke into the senior side in the 2010/11 season, his form peaking during the early months of Kenny Dalglish’s second reign.

Kelly looked well-suited to the role at the time, too, even if his hulking physique was somewhat at odds with the prototypically wiry, streamlined frames that these days tend to occupy full-back positions.

Kelly Pass Map vs West Brom

During his time at right-back that campaign, Kelly was rarely beaten on the ground or in the air, showed a decent level of comfort on the ball and boated a deceptively explosive burst of pace that served him especially well going forward.

Indeed, it may seem a long time ago now, but Kelly started at full-back in four of Brendan Rodgers’ first five games in charge of Liverpool – his passing map from the opening day’s fixture at the Hawthornes showing a player who, for a natural defender, is more than happy going forward.

This term, though, the burgeoning Jon Flanagan has become the youngster of choice to fill that position, and both Sterling and Jordan Henderson have been preferred in a wing-back slot after mid-game changes have been made.

There’s even a decent range of evidence to suggest that Andre Wisdom, currently on loan at Derby County, figures more prominently in Rodgers’ long-term plans at full-back than Kelly does.

Kelly’s story is partly one about how sportsmen are often held hostage to fortune. Since his breakthrough season, he has endured a sequence of injuries that have interrupted all of that gathering momentum. Hamstring tears and, most brutally, a ruptured cruciate ligament when Manchester United early last season, just as he was beginning to re-establish himself, have kept the defender out of the picture to the point at which we now arrive, whereby his place within the squad has been superseded by both signings of pedigree, like Sakho, and youngsters of promise, like Flanagan.

As it lies, it is difficult to see Kelly’s Liverpool career as recoverable, which begs the question of who exactly is benefitting from his continued employment at the club. In footballing terms, it certainly isn’t the player, while for John Henry and co to pay a not-insignificant weekly wage to a footballer who barely affects the first-team at all seems like a needless outlay.

In which case, a parting of ways in the summer must surely be on the cards – a long-overdue guarantee of first-team action could well see Kelly scale back to, and indeed beyond, the heights he found himself at three seasons ago.

The player’s physique, top-level experience and versatility are on their own surely enough to attract a suitor in the middle regions of the Premier League, but he is also a footballer of obvious ability, even if that ability has not quite convinced Brendan Rodgers.

Meanwhile, Liverpool could happily trim a wage bill that isn’t the world’s most efficient while commanding a transfer fee that, while probably modest, would be boosted not only by the premium of Kelly’s nationality, but also his experience in being selected in the England squad for their most recent major tournament – it is an easily forgotten fact that he travelled to the 2012 European Championships. For a player with only 27 league starts to his name, Kelly’s value would probably turn out to be considerable.

It is always a shame to see a player – and one that promised a good deal early on – not make the cut at the club which nurtured them. But it is a far greater shame to see a young footballer gaze on from the bench, week after week, as his own talent goes emphatically unused. It’s what’s happening at the moment, and it’s surely in the best interests of all parties if Kelly departs Liverpool at the next available opportunity.