Guest Blog – Lord Luis
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- Posted by pst at 12:02 PM IST
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- Filed under Guest Bloggers and Players
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- Tagged with Didi Hamman, El Hadji Diouf, Emile Heskey, Erik Mejer, Gary McAllister, Lord Luis, Michael Owen, Patrick Berger, Robbe Fowler, Salif Diao, Sami Hyypia, Steven Gerrard
Today’s post is from my very good friend and frequent commenter on this site Lord Luis. Lord Luis will be guesting on this site quite frequently hopefully!
Was Michael Owen actually any good for Liverpool as a club?
160 goals in 300 appearances, that is a very impressive figures, but was it any good for our beloved club or was it just good for Michael Owen?
Before I get into the ins and outs of my thoughts, this is not a hit out at Mr Owen because he has joined United, It’s a hit out because I think he is massively over-rated as a footballer, and I have NEVER been a fan. I appreciate what he did for us and the goals he scored, but I think having Owen in the team (or how the team played with him in it) was detrimental to our development as a club and here is why.
Does anyone remember the football we played when the little fella was up top? Ball to Sami (Legend), Hoof it up to Heskey (Who behind God Himself was the player who suffered most because of Owen), flick to Owen. Not always a goal. Avoiding a Talented midfield which included players such as Gary Mac, Patrick Berger and of course the current Skipper! They were basically there as an added line of defence. What a waste! In a time before all the foreign money had come into the English game, we had an opportunity to create a team to challenge the Premier League for a decade. We had talented players from across Europe, with flair, vision and balls and Mr Houllier smothered these players to accommodate Michael Owen and then replaced this creative talent with either good solid players, (Didi Hamman a perfect example) without much flair, players who had 1 good season or tournament (Diouf and Diao anyone?) or players who just were not good enough (Erik Mejer).
I have some stats to support my theory:
2000-2001 season – Position 3rd
Heskey – 22 Goals
Owen – 24 Goals
God – 17 Goals
2001 – 2002 season – Position 2nd
Heskey – 13 Goals
Owen – 30 Goals
God – 16 (12 for Leeds)
2002 – 2003 – Positon 5th
Heskey – 9 Goals
Owen – 28 Goals
It wasn’t until Rafa Benitez took over in the 2004-205 that we had more than one player in double figures (Baros, Gerrard and Luis Garcia 13 each).
So to finish off, I think it is a prime example of how one player has ended up bigger than the club, and in my opinion, to it’s detriment.
Thank you to PST for letting me hijack his column
Lord Luis.
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4 Comments
Comment by Arfie
Sorry Luis but you’ve confused yourself. As evidence you use the fact that until Rafa came in we didn’t have any other players on double figures, but we did, Heskey hit double figures (in all competitions) in 2001 & 2002 as you showed, yes he only got 9 in 2003, but hit 12 in 2003/04, the season before Rafa came in. So the statistics back up the fact that 2003 was an anomoly as it’s the only season we didn’t have 2 players on double figures.
I do agree that Owen’d presence dictated our style of play, but that’s true of the best players at any team. Ronaldo had the utd team built around him, Henry at Arsenal etc His presence and the fact that Houllier didn’t like Fowler did affect Fowlers appearances and that’s tragic, but it’s down to the manager not the player.
As for Heskey being affected by it, Heskey was only at Liverpool as a foil to Owen. Without Owen asking for him as a partner, he’d never have been bought in the first place. He never played to the standard he should have, he has the power, speed and strength to be scoring 20+ goals every year, but spends too much time falling over or passing to anyone else rather than stepping up and having the balls to shoot. This continues to this day.
Owen did grow too big for Liverpool and that was all down to Houllier allowing him to. He should have been forced to sign his contract by a set date or sold, but he kept delaying and delaying until Rafa came in and forced his hand. I am still to this day unsure as to whether Owen actually intended leaving or was just waiting until he was able to sign a pre contract with anyone else in the January window and using it as leverage to get a massive payrise at Liverpool or threaten to leave on a free as McManaman had done earlier. Either way he was just after money and that is the problem with Michael Owen, not his ability as a footballer.
I’d have been delighted for him to be at Anfiels this season on a free. A player of his ability to come off the bench in a tight game would be better than we have right now, he could also play along side Torres if needed, though I don’t think it would be the best partnership, they are both intelligent players and could get by and just as importantly he could easily cover for Torres if he is rested or injured and he has a similar understanding with Gerrard.
By all means question his loyalty and his love for the club, but to question his ability or effectiveness is short sighted at best. Without him, we’d have been mid table at best in the Houllier years and no way would we have won the cup treble.
Comment by Lord Luis
To start with I hold my hands up and got 1 figure wrong, I do apologise.
I agree with you that we might not have won that treble without Owen, but that wasn’t my point. My point and you’ve mentioned it in your reply is that Owen was allowed to get too big for the club, which in my view was detrimental to our progress as a club.
You also mention Alfie and I’ll quote ‘I do agree that Owen’s presence dictated our style of play, but that’s true of the best players at any team. Ronaldo had the utd team built around him, Henry at Arsenal etc’. These were and still are creative world class players which rightly so should have teams built around them. Owen was a finisher, not a man to build a team around, but a spearhead for an attack.
Houiller might have given Stevie G the captaincy but did bugger all else to develop our skipper because he was afraid of upsetting Owen, and again avoid that creative midfield we had (and replaced it with something more solid but less likely to produce many scoring chances). Gerrard only scored double figures once (2000-2001 season) before Rafa took over – when Owen had left and Stevie was given the role in the team he should’ve been given. Players like Rooney and Ronaldo have been given responsibility to drive a team on at a young age (with experience around them, Stevie had Gary Mac, Rooney and Ronaldo have had Giggs and Scholes), developing them and their clubs because players WANT to play with them, whereas Gerrard has only been given the opportunity to show the World what he can do when the ball wasn’t whistling over his head 80% of the time.
Again I appreciate what Owen did for us, but still think it held us back as a team.
Comment by Arfie
I appreciate what you are saying, but to say Ronaldo and Henry are creative players and that’s why they should have teams built around them is wrong, they had teams built around them because they scored goals. A few more out and out strikers that had teams built to suit them are Van Nistelrooy at manyoo and Drogba at Chelsea neither of whom are creative players, they are there to stick the ball in the back of the net and the team is designed to help that happen.
Manyoo had the top goalscorerand arguably the best player in the world in Ronaldo but I would bet they score more goals without him.
The failings of the Liverpool team under Houllier are not down to Owen, they are entirely down to Houllier. We had a lot of talented players there and his inability to manage them resulted in them all going including Macca and Murphy and eventually Fowler which he should be hung, drawn and quartered for!
We couldn’t have built the team around Gerrard at that time as he simply wasn’t good enough any more than we could build the defense around Carragher. It took a better manager and coach to come in and turn them both into what they are now.
We played to the strengths we had at the time just as we do now and just as we did when we had Crouchie up front (the return of the punt and hope he gets it style).
The loss of any top player results in a change in the style of play for the team and sometimes that results in more goals elsewhere, the same will happen when Gerrard stops playing and again when Torres goes it happened when Rooney left Everton and it’s likely to happen with manyoo now Ronaldo has gone. To a certain extent it’s already happened with Alonso’s departure and we look like we will be a much more attacking team without the man touted as being Liverpools most creative player.
It’s wrong to apportion blame to a player for the style of play of the team and I feel the loss of Owen was massive and it took 3 years before we found a replacement. Who knows what might have happened had we still got Owen banging in the goals in 2005/06/07? might we have been challenging the top 2 instead of clinging onto 4th? Had we been nearer the top, might we have been able to make bigger sigings in those first few years under Rafa than Bellamy, Josemi, Voronin etc?
So yes the team evolved after we lost our best player because it had to but it took 3 years before we got Torres and started to build the team around him before we started looking like a dangerous team and 5 years before we were actually challenging.
If you want to blame anyone for Owen being too big, blame the man who allowed him to become so. I can’t see Rafa letting Gerrard run down his contract or get too big, can you?
Comment by Lord Luis
Sorry I have not been able to reply for so long. I have been I’ll. I’m recovering but still not fully fit.
Just a quick comment on a few of your points.
1. “to say Ronaldo and Henry are creative players and that’s why they should have teams built around them is wrong, they had teams built around them because they scored goals” – They did not arrive at their respective clubs as PROVEN goal scorers, they developed and as Teams were built aroudn their strengths they scored/created more goals.
2. “It’s wrong to apportion blame to a player for the style of play of the team and I feel the loss of Owen was massive and it took 3 years before we found a replacement” – Nor entirely the players fault, there I agree, but when you have a finisher like Owen, and your entire team is built around that player scoring goals (Which I think was our biggest problem), you don’t have a plan B. Owen was injured quite a bit in his time, and when he wasn’t there we struggled, because the team was entirely built around him scoring goals. As for taking 3 years to find a replacement, maybe it wouldn’t have had to take so long had our team not been built around Owen (Mostly Houllier’s fault I admit, but Owens Ego must play a large part in it also)
3. “So yes the team evolved after we lost our best player because it had to but it took 3 years before we got Torres and started to build the team around him” – We are building a TEAM this time. We have a plan B, and If anything we are building a team around Gerrard, not Torres. Yes Torres is an integral part of that system (He is the best Striker in the World in My Opinion), but it’s all about giving Gerrard freedom. If he doesn’t get that freedom, we now have a plan B and C. We have such a wide spread of goal scoring players now, that there is a goal threat from more han one player….. unlike previous years
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