Stewart Downing: New Beginnings Or False Dawn?

IN a summer where many of Liverpool’s highly rated players have been subjects of transfer speculation, it is a damning indictment of how poor Stewart Downing’s first season at the club went that the £20m winger has not even registered a blip on the transfer radar.

It seems increasingly likely that despite an appalling first league campaign on Merseyside consisting on zero goals or assists, Downing will remain at Anfield for Brendan Rodgers debut season. While Andy Carroll seems destined for the exit door and speculation is rife about leading players such as Skrtel, Agger and Suarez, Downing is pretty much guaranteed to have a Liverbird upon his chest for the foreseeable future.

It is symptomatic of his inept Liverpool career so far that, despite huge dissatisfaction with his performances amongst the fans, he is pretty much unsellable for the Reds at the moment. This isn’t because he has shown a recent improvement or because there is a belief at the club that his talents will shine through after a difficult first season. It is simply down to the fact that selling him would bring such a negligible amount of money into the clubs coffers that, in a season likely to be bloated with Europa League fixtures, keeping Downing, a player signed for a huge amount of money, as a squad player is probably a better bet than allowing him to leave for what would likely be a quarter of the price paid for him less than 12 months ago.

Not only will his presence in the squad allow for some rotation and give Rodgers another option in an area of the field that Liverpool are understaffed following the exits of Dirk Kuyt and Maxi Rodriguez, keeping Downing seems to be a certainty based on the fact that very few clubs covet the services of a winger approaching 30 years old coming off the back of a season that showed little quality and even less confidence. Not many clubs would want to take him off Liverpool’s hands right now and any that would relish the opportunity to sign him (probably clubs likely to battle relegation) would probably not be able to meet his salary demands. Stewart Downing is less in demand than a rain soaked August. It is all a far cry from a year ago.

Downing joined Liverpool with an air of certainty surrounding him. Sure, the transfer fee (and probably his weekly wage) was hugely inflated, but he was a proven Premiership winger, a regular England international and a player who, given his past, was expected to provide goals and assists for Kenny Dalglish’s team. He brought neither. His chronic lack of self confidence when it came to beating opposition full backs and his refusal to accept responsibility on the pitch despite being a highly experienced player were only overshadowed by his complete inability to strike up a coherent partnership with his left flank partner Jose Enrique and, most crucially, Andy Carroll, the target man who was supposed to benefit most from Downing’s service from the flanks.
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Downing was an abject failure given the price that Liverpool paid for him. His performances ranged from below par to the invisible. Despite that, he astonishingly still played in 36 league games and started the Carling Cup and FA Cup finals.

Brendan Rodgers will now be faced with the extremely difficult task of extracting more effective performances from Downing. The fact that Rodgers usually uses his ‘wingers’ as ‘wide forwards’ who are expected to chip in with goals and play higher up the pitch than where Downing is most comfortable poses the first huge problem. Rodgers likes his wide forwards to cross from the close to the byline regularly and get into goal scoring positions, neither of which is Downing strong suit. The England international likes to cross the ball from deep and while he can get beyond his full back and deliver from further up the pitch, he is often reluctant to do so especially when his confidence is low. Downing will have to adapt (with the help of his manager) to this new style of play because repeatedly launching hopeful crosses into the box from 30 yards out for Andy Carroll as he did last year will no longer be an option, thankfully.

One thing Rodgers has made positive comment on is Downing’s ability to play on the right flank as well as the left thus giving the manager and his team more scope for variation during matches as well as on a game by game basis should Downing be involved. At times last season Downing did look dangerous cutting in from the right side on to his favoured foot but, again, it is something that Rodgers will need to work with his player on. Downing also played infield in a more central midfield role a lot during his time at Aston Villa and to good effect. His technique and passing are sound enough that his new manager may look to utilise him in this role from time to time as part of a midfield three.

While the player’s continued presence in the squad is no cause for major celebration amongst fans, he does offer his manager some versatility and if he his new boss can somehow coax an improvement from him, Downing could be of some use to the Reds yet – as his winning goal in the Europa League qualifier showed on Thursday. The only shame is that, given what we have seen so far, he is more than likely going to end up being a squad player used to plug gaps and give people a rest. Not exactly the new John Barnes Liverpool hoped their £20m would get them.

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