The Soccer Blog: The Return of Robbie Keane

Friday, 3 December 2010

The Return of Robbie Keane

By: Noel | December 3rd, 2010
joe cole header

“Oh for fuck’s sake!” or words to that effect, were exclaimed by Joe Cole as he was subbed off for David N’Gog towards the end of yesterday’s Europa League match against Steaua Bucureşti. I rather suspect more than a few watching the match muttered much the same thing for every minute after the sixtieth he remained on the pitch, it having become painfully clear he wasn’t going to find his form immediately on return from injury and that it might be better to have him make way for a player who could conceivably effect the outcome. Though perhaps a related point, those weren’t quite the words I found myself thinking at the time. Instead, my muttered curse was, “So much for Liverpool’s glorious transfer coup!”

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Let’s get one thing clear right off the top: Joe Cole’s shaky play yesterday wasn’t the problem. He was coming back from a long lay off and rust was to be expected. Moreover, there is the oft discussed idea that especially when it comes to more attack-minded players our current manager’s usual tactics are not best suited to casting them in a particularly favourable light. Certainly, then, Liverpool’s somnambulant set-up against Steaua did no favours to Joe Cole, but on the back of a season that has seen him sandwich an unimpressive run while fit between a stretch in the stands for a foolishly acquired red card and a lengthy injury it certainly did him no favours when Ryan Babel put him clear on goal with the keeper scrambling to cover the changed angle and instead of passing it into the open net Liverpool’s southern import chose to stomp down on the ball and lose the opportunity. Throw in a petulant outburst when his generally ineffective day came to a close and despite the entirely valid fitness excuse it became somewhat difficult to look at the club’s supposed saviour as he trudged off the pitch and not wonder why?

Just why was it so many felt he would be some kind of saviour? Jamie Carragher said he would be. Steven Gerrard said he could do things with a ping-pong ball that Lionel Messi could only dream of (though he made no comment on whether Messi’s dreams of such involved a largely unclothed Winona Ryder). Either the manager Roy Hodgson or the man playing Football Manager Christian Purslow thought he warranted a £90,000 per week salary, placing him behind only Fernando Torres and Steven Gerrard–as well as perhaps Pepe Reina depending on varying reports–in the club’s wage hierarchy. He was presented as bringing so much to the table that it was implied he could effectively replace both Yossi Benayoun and Alberto Aquilani on Liverpool’s roster.

There were certainly extenuating circumstances for his poor display yesterday, and there may even be extenuating circumstances for his season as a whole, but it’s hard to understand the universe where making an injury-prone reclamation project closer to the end of his career than the beginning the third or fourth highest paid player at the club is any kind of coup. Even if he were to eventually come good and miraculously leave his injury riddled past behind it would still have meant paying superstar money for a high risk, moderate reward player whose biggest selling point in retrospect was perhaps his passport. Certainly it can’t be his ironman-like fitness record, given that he’s spent more time on the trainer’s table over the past three years than the aforementioned Aquilani. And in the end the petulance he showed at being taken off after having offered nothing in yesterday’s match and nothing for Liverpool, period–or in recent years for past clubs or with England, if we’re being honest–was not a moment that covered him with glory or helped his cause.

In in the past there have been occasions where Torres or Gerrard have appeared petulant on the pitch–last year’s Gerrard incident that shifted the “Rafa’s lost the room” narrative into high gear when he showed his displeasure at Torres being taken off is perhaps the most obvious example–but at least they’ve done enough to suggest they can pull a magic moment out of an otherwise failed performance. Their other actions, and their history as superstar athletes, justify an inflated self-belief and some level of annoyance while feeling the manager is wrong and it hurts the team’s chances to pull them. One can of course feel such actions are inappropriate and unfortunate, but right or wrong it is likely that most supporters wondered exactly the same thing as Gerrard last season when he mouthed his displeasure to the world.

Yesterday when Cole was subbed off most likely wondered what had taken so long, while on the whole his time with the club to date seems increasingly to be more about hype than substance. Perhaps it is not kind to say, but for a number of seasons now Cole has been nothing but failed potential and media hype, and he has done nothing in recent memory with any club at any level to suggest he has it in him to salvage a match any more than Lucas or N’Gog or Kuyt would. Players like that–good players, perhaps potentially great players, but certainly not current superstars–would be rightly criticized for throwing their toys out of the pram if they found themselves substituted after a poor display, and yet Cole behaves as though the entire world believes he’s better than Fernando Torres. Perhaps he really believes it, too, since certain corners of the media have done their best to create another English superstar on faith and discarded strands of dental floss, but yesterday’s petulance leaves a sour taste that an otherwise excusable poor performance wouldn’t have on its own, because Cole has proven nothing and if he really does think he’s god’s gift to LFC it’s hard to imagine that we’ll see more than we already have over the length of his hefty contract.

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None of this means he can’t come good, but it’s an apparent entitlement that he has in no way earned, and his on-pitch contributions have been a serious step down from either Aquilani or Benayoun individually. The extent to which he’s been a downgrade from them as a pair, then, makes one inclined to reach further for a more apt comparison, and so at the end of the day I find myself looking at a more injury-prone Robbie Keane. Only LFC stands to lose far more over the length of Cole’s contract than they lost in the Keane saga. For all the flack Rafa got for Keane, he was sold right back to Spurs in the following January window for a moderate loss. It was certainly disappointing and a hit to the club’s finances at a time it couldn’t afford to bleed money on failed transfers, but today Cole is on £90,000 a week–or £4.68/$7.29M a season. That’s more per year than was lost on the Keane deal, and nobody’s likely to buy an aging reclamation project like Cole from the club when he’s on wages like that–and let’s be honest, that’s what he is, a once promising footballer to gamble on on the cheap in the hopes of salvaging some of that promise. He certainly is not a superstar worthy of being the third or fourth highest paid player at a club, which means Liverpool is stuck with him and his contract, one that will see them lose considerably more in total than they did on Keane.

Maybe he believes the hype, believes the press clippings and the price tag and that he truly is a superstar and Liverpool’s savior. And again, maybe he will come good, even if he’s spent most of the past three seasons either injured or innefective and considered surplus to requirements by former managers Hiddink, Capello, and Ancelotti. Certainly I have no reason to doubt it when people talk about how much he wants to succeed at the club, and I do hope he does–it doesn’t give me pleasure to see a Liverpool player failing. Maybe one can even explain away his disgust at being substituted as a case of determination rather than petulance.

Unfortunately, the cold truth in the end is that he’s a player on massive wages who isn’t actually underperforming. Because for all the talk of him coming good in the end, talk that I’ve even hopefully stuck my toe in, the sad reality both on the pitch when he’s been healthy and off it when he’s not is that he’s performing with Liverpool so far this season to roughly the standard set over the past few years. To say he hasn’t yet gotten the chance to show us all the real Joe Cole would be to ignore more than his unimpressive displays when he’s had a run of matches this season: it also ignores that Cole’s recent history suggests that what we’ve seen from him this season on £90,000 a week isn’t far off what we should expect to see from him for the remainder of his time with the club. Injured or rusty; rusty or injured. England’s hoped for next superstar, continually on the verge of coming good but never quite delivering and more media construct than anything at this stage.

In light of yesterday’s outburst it will be interesting to see how–or even if–he fits back into the club’s best 11 with Maxi on form and a series of performances that would rightfully see him placed somewhere behind Jovanovic in the pecking order, because like it or not this version of Robbie Keane looks to be here for the long haul.

Some Related Liverpool Posts:What’s Liverpool’s Best Eleven?Five Questions Left to AnswerGuest Post: Liverpool’s Defensive Tactics, Part TwoMatchday: Liverpool v. Birmingham CityMatch Preview: Liverpool v. Trabzonspor, 08.26.10

Category: Special Features

Tags: Alberto Aquilani, Causes of Alcoholism, Fernando Torres, Jamie Carragher, Joe Cole, Lionel Messi, Overcompensated Drama Queens, Special Features, Steven Gerrard, Yossi Benayoun
« Liverpool 1, Steaua 1: Wake Up and Read This | Home | redtrev73To be fair Noel, his show of petulance/frustration was rather unedifying and far from what the paying punters in bucharest need to be seeing from a lad who earns the wedge that he does. As i've said previously, i had some sympathy with the kid as he was no doubt desprately trying to play himself into some kind of form before getting the crooky finger. I have no doubt that the pressure of expectation weighs heavily on him and woy was at pains to point out his delicacy-of-mind in his pre-match presser. A little more understandable then, that he might be a bit narked to see the oul duffer in the match-coat hauling him off first. Inconsistency anyone?? Sadly, roy and joe may prove to be the final expensive (in every way) mistakes of the damned hicks/gillett era. I have some hope that joe might thrive under a new coach but our great club will continue to decline under hodgson's inept guidance. and that, as a certain rotund flawed genius might say, is a "fact".INCABRUCEGreat piece Noel.

Ray Hudson pretty much covers your point on our J Cole situation through this piece discussing English players in general....

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v...

Sadly, the man makes an extremely sound argument.

YNWA

NoelI know we haven't gone into it in huge detail around here that much, but I expect most would be on the same page as him over the general idea that England's FA system and youth set up is fundamentally broken and has nothing on Spain/Netherlands/Germany, or France or Italy for that matter, which is why he's probably right that the later two would be better bets to win a major trophy again before England.

Of course, it wasn't so long ago that Germany was at a crossroads, and now people are talking about them being a juggernaut down the road. England could turn itself around if it had the will, the problem is that much of the media either being prehistoric or viewing the game as more celebrity entertainment than serious sport makes finding that will a hundred times more difficult.

Though I also have to chuckle a little bit since yesterday Hudson was taking every chance to praise Konchesky and Poulsen in Steaua match. Thankfully he didn't quite get into Xavi's chameleon eyes territory when discussing them.Simon"somnambulant". impressive.GalahadThreepwoodI was excited when Cole came on, mainly because of the glowing statements about him from people like Gerrard ("better than Messi"). But as the season's progressed, I've become more and more jaded, to the point that I'm slightly depressed when I see him in the starting 11. I think Noel's right in saying that Cole's performance so far is about on par with what he's done for other teams in the recent past, and if that's true there's no real reason to expect any better from him. We took a gamble on a reclamation project, and right now it looks like we lost.Jay WrightI have to agree with this article whole-heartedly. I disagreed with fans clamouring for us to sign the guy in the summer (much like I didn't want Keane either, especially at his price!) and am yet to be proven wrong, that there is indeed a natural fit for Cole at Liverpool that doesn't cost the team more than it benefits.

The simple fact is that Cole has been playing poorly AND the team was playing poorly with him in it. Now that's he's forfeited his place through injury, he should have to fight his way back in instead of just having the place handed to him, as it undoubtedly will be. Somehow, despite being the worst performer with the "fringe players" I am sure that he will be back amongst the regular starting 11 before any of the other attacking options that have been waiting out in the cold all season (and could use the same excuses about rust, or a lack of familiarity with their teammates during their intermittent appearances in the Europa League/Carling cup).

Anyway, funnily enough I can't recall Mr. "Bad Attitude" Babel ever openly venting the frustration that he must have been feeling on any of the numerous occasions that he's been substituted for us. I doubt anybody else will start criticising Cole’s mentality now though...
NoelGreat shout on Babel. I feel like a bit of an idiot for not even thinking of him and finding a way to work it in. And I think his outburst might give Hodgson cover for making dropping him down a few spots, which might be the right result for the wrong reason. Suppose you take what you can get, though, and perhaps a short, sharp shock to the system might even be the best chance at seeing Cole show all that talent he's supposed to have hiding in there somewhere.Tropics RedWe seem to have recruited players just with one element missing to be truly top drawer - Maxi and Cole lack that yard of pace that an attacking midfielder needs wheras Babel lacks the wizardry and guile. Kuyt is a great defensive winger but won't turn a game on an individual piece of skill and Jovanovic seems just short as well.

All of these players make fantastic players to have in the squad, but not one of them excites as a star player.blog comments powered by Disqus