Leaden strikers further fuel Owen debate
Aug 22 2005
By Len Capeling, Daily Post
MICHAEL OWEN may have been hundreds of miles away from a sunlit Anfield, yet he still dominated conversation before and after this untidy encounter.
Hardly surprising given the collective inadequacy of the strikers on view, none of whom looked capable of scoring 10 goals a season, never mind 20.
Steven Gerrard worked tirelessly to provide Fernando Morientes, Djibril Cisse and auxiliary attacker Boudewijn Zenden with a reasonable supply of the ball, but they continued to embrace impotency rather than incisiveness.
You could imagine Gerrard's growing consternation as chance after chance went begging, for the captain has led a chorus of approval for the return of Owen to his goalscoring roots.
"I wake up every morning hoping to read that he's on his way to us," sighed Gerrard earlier in the week, nudging his manager so hard he probably bruised him.
For his part, the Spanish coach continues to insist that far from seeking a striker, his focus - repeated a thousand times - is on a centre-back (free-scoring, presumably) and a right-winger.
Cisse occupied that problem position on Saturday and did himself no favours, whether hugging the touch-line - which he rarely did - or vainly attempting to convince a packed house of his goalscoring attributes.
Three times the France front-man found himself with only Sunderland keeper Kelvin Davis to beat and three times the crowd was forced into evasive action as the ball hurtled towards them.
Those are the kind of openings Owen seldom saw when Gerard Houllier kept him on a starvation diet. Here, against a willing but worry-ingly limited Sunderland side, he would have revelled.
The newly-coiffured Cisse did eventually get the ball into the net, only to be ruled offside for the second time in a minute.
Added to a shot from Gerrard that struck the post, glorious headed chances looped over by Fernando Morientes and Zenden, it provided proof of Liverpool's ability to prise teams open even when lodged between unconvincing and and merely functional.
Rarely, during an afternoon of increasing tedium, did Liverpool give the impression they had the players to make the relegation favourites pay for their fragility.
Fans slouched home treasuring the three points and decrying the performance. Hanging heavy in the air were memories of a crushing victory not taken and the mental image of Owen in romantic red again.
Benitez will continue to shake his head while insisting he's happy with his strikers. Which begs the question, how happy is happy?
He can't have been the only one who didn't feel a piece of him shrivel as Cisse gave a pbuttable impersonation of someone not nearly clever enough to cut it in the Premiership.
Rumours that the expensive import might be offloaded to Marseille cannot have helped Cisse's confidence, but with a first touch that slows him down and a tendency to take the wrong option, he continues to be £14million ill-spent.
The fact that Benitez had not left Valencia when the deal was struck makes you wonder whether the Auxerre targetman even would have made the Spaniard's subsidiary shopping list.
I suspect not, though he did buy Morientes, whose struggles are there for all to see. What Cisse and Morientes do offer - Peter Crouch also - is the alleged ability to operate in a 4-1-3-1-1 - tweaked on Saturday to 4--2-2-1-1 - which demand the man furthest forward to hang on to the ball while midfielders rush to join him.
This is how Benitez likes to operate, and, unless he tinkers, Owen simply doesn't fit the format.
Supporters of Owen - and they mbuttively outnumber the doubters - will point to Saturday's ultimately slumbrous show as evidence that without end-product even the most sophisticated concept can be brought down by bluntness.
Proof that things weren't flowing came when Sunderland too easily picked their way around a central two of Gerrard and Momo Sissoko, leaving the holding man Xabi Alonso outnumbered.
Sissoko, who had a generally impressive afternoon, found himself switched further back to support Alonso, but there remained far too many opportunities for Sunderland to spread the ball wide where the tricky Andy Welsh prospered down Liverpool's left.
farewell Baros teh gheythe gay looking f***er has spent far too much time aligning himself with various other teams(valencia,Barca, THE f***ING BS!!) and moaning like a tart for...
Liverpool solved that imbalance by the time Welsh found himself dismissed by the awful Barry Knight for an innocuous challenge on Luis Garcia. But it provided further evidence that Liverpool's players remain confused - or is that unconvinced? - by some of Benitez's thinking.
Thankfully, man-of-the match Alonso gave another demonstration of his silky pbutting skills, even if few of his offerings brought a necessary response from lumpen forwards - including late entrants Garcia and Milan Baros.
It was the Spain playmaker's clbuttic free-kick that eventually ensured the points went the right way.
Pity the other pointers didn't look quite so propitious, even on a bright summer's day.
