If
Liverpool, beleaguered, bereft of confidence and devoid of
hope, are not what they once were, Gerrard, too, seems a pale
imitation of the man who forever raged against the dying of the
light.
For so long Liverpool’s beating heart and pumping fist, this
season Gerrard has offered just glimpses of the force of nature
which carried the club to glory in Istanbul in 2005, Cardiff in
2006 and so nearly helped Rafael Benítez’s team hunt down
Manchester United in the quest for that elusive Premier League
title last season. The Liverpool captain, unstoppable, remorseless,
put Real Madrid, United themselves and Aston Villa to the sword.
The latter, a 5-0 win at Anfield, was the last truly great Gerrard
performance, bristling with menace, coursing with energy.
Nothing since has quite been the same. The idea that £40 million
may be more beneficial to the club than a fading Captain Marvel,
once a heresy on the Kop, has now been downgraded to opinion. There
are those who insist Gerrard has reached his sell-by date. He
enters the most important year of his career facing questions, for
the first time, not about how his club and country can cope without
him, but whether the future would be so bleak after all.
Gerrard will be 30 when he is named for Fabio Capello’s England
squad for next summer’s World Cup. No doubt he will play in the
European Championship in Poland and Ukraine in 2012, injury
permitting, but time will have slowed his pace, changed his game.
South Africa represents the last chance for Gerrard to shrug off
the assertion of one Premier League manager that he has done
nothing to merit his reputation as a great player on the
international stage.
By that time, though, he may find that he is no longer even a
Champions League player, so abysmally have Liverpool failed their
autumn tests. Joe Cole’s re-emergence may threaten his place in
Capello’s plans, the roving left-sided role as suited to the
Chelsea midfielder as it is to Gerrard. The season when he was
supposed to seal his destiny could yet slip into despair.
Those close to him, of course, insist his travails will not
last, that he is simply getting over the groin injury sustained in
Ukraine in October which threatened to derail his season. “He is
improving,” says his manager, Benítez. “He was not training for a
while, but his physical level is getting better.
“He knows he has to improve, and for me that is very positive.
He realises he is a very important player for us and we were
analysing his statistics and he was doing much better.
“The last game [against Portsmouth] he was not at the same level
but that can happen in one game. He knows he is improving
physically and the main thing now is confidence.”
The suspicion remains, though, that Gerrard is suffering
mentally, as well as physically. He shoulders the burden of
Anfield’s hopes and expectations more than any other, and surveying
the wreckage of a campaign which promised so much will pain him
more than most. He is, arguably, as far from the Premier League
title as he ever was, a situation he is desperate to remedy before
he must consider leaving if he is to fulfil his ambitions.
Too desperate, perhaps, at times, suggests Benítez. The
Liverpool manager may have been castigated earlier this season for
suggesting his senior players needed to take responsibility for
their plight, but now he sees the reverse. Gerrard is trying to do
too much, too quickly.
“He is such a good player and the fans expect him to play at his
best all the time. That is not easy when you have not been training
with the team,” says the Spaniard. “He puts pressure on himself. He
tries really hard, sometimes too hard, because he wants to help, he
wants to be a key player for us on the pitch, he wants to give
more, but sometimes that is not possible. But he is not too old, he
is not past his peak. If he has no problems, he will be much better
for the rest of the season.”
Benítez, of course, dismisses concerns over the denouement to
Gerrard’s season in South Africa, insisting he “knows the best
thing for him is to think about his club, and at the end he can
think about the World Cup,” but Capello is unlikely to be so
sanguine.
If Gerrard’s problems are physical, then by the time England
kick off against the United States on June 12 in Rustenburg, he
should be back to his old self. If he is weighed down by the
pressure of Liverpool’s stuttering campaign, entering the
positivity of an England camp not short on self-belief could give
him a new lease of life. Should the demons and the doubts remain,
his hangover from Liverpool’s poor season refuse to shift, the
moment designated as Gerrard’s apotheosis may never come.
“Going into a different environment, away from all the anxiety
of the run-in of your club team can come at a good time for you,”
says John Aldridge, a seasoned Gerrard-watcher and veteran of the
1990 and 1994 World Cups. “It does not necessarily follow that if
you’re playing badly, you carry that over. It can give you a fresh
start.
“But if Liverpool do not get that fourth place, that could be
something that England benefit from. Not so much because Steven has
to prove himself to the rest of the world, because everyone knows
he is a top player and has the potential to be one of the stars of
the tournament, but because he will want to prove it to
himself.”
Here’s what you could have won
Steven Gerrard has won 12 major honours:
FA Cup (2), League Cup (2), Champions League, Uefa Cup, Uefa Super
Cup (2), Football Writers’ Player of the Year, PFA Player of the
Year, PFA Young Player of the Year, Uefa Club Footballer of the
Year.
Manchester United’s Ryan Giggs has won
27:
Premier League (11), FA Cup (4), League Cup (3), Champions League
(2), Super Cup, Intercontinental Cup, Fifa Club World Cup, BBC
Sports Personality of the Year, PFA Player of the Year, PFA Young
Player of the Year (2).