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).