IT’S time again to continue my look into player season reviews. If you haven’t already, please search out, have a read and get in touch about my other pieces.
Next up on the list is the curious case of Lucas Leiva. Why a curious case I hear you ask? Well lets go back in time a little bit to 2007 (Wayne’s World diddly-doo moment!), and Liverpool unveil a 20-year old Brazilian midfielder. One who comes in with rave reviews and captain of the Brazil under-20’s who months before he helped guide to victory in the South American Youth Championship.
Many fans will have dreamed that this chap will have that touch of flair, that samba-beat, step-overs and 30 yard screamers, and perhaps this expectation from some quarters helped to dictate the response the lad received in the following seasons. We were always assured by Rafa that people do not know how good a player Lucas actually is, and at the time we were spoilt in central midfield with Alonso and Mascherano so whenever Lucas came in, he already had big shoes to fill, and for a young man who moved halfway around the world and understandably required time to settle into a new club, a new city, a new culture and a new way of life he was immediately on the back foot because he wasn’t ‘Brazilian’ and he wasn’t Mascherano.
As often happens in the modern game, unreal expectations are far removed from reality and patience is sadly a thing of the past. Admittedly Lucas himself had a moments he would rather forget, a rash challenge against Wigan conceding a penalty in a match we would ultimately draw sticks in my mind as we chased down United. Thankfully we had a manager prepared to stick his guns and show patience and faith in Lucas and over recent seasons we have seen him blossom into some player and it amuses me still when opposition fans show their ignorance and scoff at Lucas. What Lucas does well for me is the simple bits of the game, very much what Claude Makelele excelled in. He wins balls, dominates, tackles, disrupts, harries and when in possession is able to keep it simple and retain the ball for Liverpool.
More importantly, by having a player like Lucas in the side it allows the flair in players like Gerrard to come to the fore as they have trust in him and that he has them covered. By perfecting that defensive role he not only helps Liverpool shore up at the back but unshackles the offensive minded players providing the team with more and better attacking opportunities.
As a side point before I carry on talking about Lucas, I want to issue a plea to the LFC universe: please, please, please look at the career of Lucas at Liverpool, take stock and then apply the same patience that Rafa showed when looking at players like Henderson and Carroll. Young players more often than not need time to settle and find their groove at a huge club like LFC and deserve our patience.
Despite many people completely writing off Liverpool’s season as awful and mocking Hodgson’s decision to take 6 LFC players to the Euro’s, the season actually started with a lot of promise. It is forgotten that we played football that was a breath of fresh air in comparison to previous seasons and created chance after chance after chance and in that first half of the season there was only the defeat at Spurs where a Liverpool win would not have been a fair result. Against the traditional top sides we dominated Arsenal and Chelsea and we should have beaten the Manchester clubs at Anfield in games we bossed.
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This became a similar story as our lack of finishing saw draws come from games we were far superior with the results against Sunderland and Norwich springing to mind. Whereas offensively it was just not happening for us, defensively we were sound; Agger and Skrtel were clicking well and Lucas was majestic. Let me throw a stat at you here, in the 12 premier league games that Lucas managed for us last season he won 52 tackles, and to put this into perspective, Vincent Kompany in his 31 premier league games last season won 51. For me that speaks volumes of the player he has become and how vital he is to Liverpool.
More so, is the path that Liverpool’s season went down following that night at Stamford Bridge when that brute Mata collided with Lucas and left him with a season ending injury. At that point in time, the much maligned Adam was starting to settle and build a decent relationship with Lucas in the centre of midfield, but his injury saw the Scot regress rather than build on his better run of form. We also looked less sound defensively, more fragile at the back. I think Spearing is a decent, promising player but he is not ready to step up into that Lucas role, and perhaps won’t ever be able to on a regular basis, and on occasion really struggled, no more apparent than at Old Trafford and the FA Cup Final.
The fragility, low confidence and lack of any consistency in that second half of the season, the part of the season people only seem to remember, can be traced back to the loss of Lucas. I fully believe that had Lucas been fit for the remainder of the season, things would have been very different; before he was crocked we were close to really clicking and pushing on. I say this as players were beginning to settle, as I have previously expressed I thought Adam was clicking with Lucas and finding form, we were defensively sound and chance after chance was being created up front and it was a matter of time for a forward to find his goal scoring boots. For me the loss of Lucas was a huge factor in what ultimately was a disappointing season.
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