Loaded Man said:
Whilst wading through the usual bile, then it’s mad just how many people don’t seem to rate Gerrard that highly.
It's because, despite much self-delusion from Liverpool fans and the media that cater to them, he was never really in the highest brackets. He wasn't an average player but nowhere near a great.
Let me show you what I mean. Take Gerrard and give him the exact same everything - the exact same performances against the exact same teams in every game. But make him move clubs once every 3 years. Would he be remembered as one of the great midfielders? No.
As always with you pricks, sentimentality is overruling any logical position that you might hold.
Gerrard was one of the few players out there who (in his prime at least) could probably play to a high level in almost any position on the pitch. For me, then he was at his very best playing in the number ‘ten’ role about 2008-2009, where his energy, ability to create openings, telepathic understanding with Torres and eye for a goal meant he was almost unplayable at times.
Gerrard has never been in even the top 5 players in the world. He often had purple patches when people like Alonso and Torres, people who WERE world class for a period, made them look good. He's a scouse Stephen Ireland.
No doubt that his powers have been on the wane over the last couple of years but, for years, he carried Liverpool almost single handedly – if anyone was going to dig us out of a hole then odds on it would be Steven Gerrard.
This is more scouse bollocks. He dragged you out of the shit because he was the only half decent player you had much of the time. You didn't let anybody else drag you out of the shit because you never spent well because you had Gerrard as a fallback.
Hes never been perfect by any means – there’s definitely a level of insecurity and probably some traits about still needing to be THE man in there somewhere – which may have influenced his decision to leave now, who knows. He arguably also didn’t have the required discipline to be a really top class central midfielder when playing as part of a two. One of a dying breed of players who still wears the (clichéd) ‘heart on his sleeve’ though – which, again, is surely what supporters of any club want to see in their players. It MATTERS to him.
So?
It mattered to Paul Dickov but he was still wank. Yaya Toure and people like Fernando Torres didn't give even an ounce of a shit yet were great players.
I don't want to go to a game and watch 11 players "just like me". I'm surrounded by 45,000 people who think just like me, I expect the players on the pitch to be controlled athletes who aren't headless chickens at the first sign of pressure.
Gerrard is one of those people who was a good player and could have been a great player at any other club but Liverpool who infected him with their ridiculous notions on what "passion" is (yeah, coordinated singing, how passionate), a ridiculous victim complex and a ridiculous and consistently failure to be even partially relevant in English football for the past decade.
Gerrard and his good but could have been great if not for a terrible and almost psychotically self-obsessed mentality is absolutely the perfect mascot for Liverpool FC. Now that he's off to shake his arse to try and attract some American dollars despite his obvious-to-everybody stage of being past it is also a wonderful analogy for the state of Liverpool FC.
No wonder you people are a laughing stock. When people laugh at you more than Leeds then you'd think that brain cell that I'm sure you could get together to pool should maybe think "wait, have we become a parody?"
If people really are offended by the coverage that his last game at Anfield’s likely to get, then the solution is easy – don’t watch / listen to it. It really is that straightforward.
Don't like the Tory Government? Then don't read any newspapers for the next 5 years. Or turn on any TV, or visit any internet sites or talk to pretty much anybody in the world.
Yeah that seems like a solution.
