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Posts Tagged ‘michael-owen’

• ‘They are very reliant on a couple of star players’
• ‘Position reflects where they are right now’

Michael Owen helped Manchester United knock his former club Liverpool out of the FA Cup yesterday, and then said he is not surprised at how swiftly Liverpool have plummeted down the Premier League table.

Owen won four major trophies while at Anfield, including three during the 2000-01 campaign under Gérard Houllier. But after finishing second two seasons ago, Liverpool missed out on a Champions League place last season and have been forced to bring Kenny Dalglish back to spark a revival after a dismal Christmas period that included defeats to Wolverhampton Wanderers and Blackburn Rovers, sent them tumbling into the wrong half of the table.

Not of this is Owen’s concern anymore, although he remains close to Steven Gerrard and Jamie Carragher and has strong opinions about life at his old club.

“I am not particularly surprised,” he said. “I would say their position reflects where they are right now. They are in the middle of a transitional period and off the pitch they have had a change of ownership.

“They are also very reliant on a couple of star players and if they are out injured, they have tended to struggle.”

Although Owen’s move to Manchester United ensures he will never be welcomed back into the Liverpool fold with open arms, it does allow him a detached perspective. And even if he opts not to share the information he has been given, it is evident things have been going badly wrong behind the scenes.

“I don’t think they would ever forgive me if I said what they had told me,” said Owen. “Throughout all those successful years Liverpool built their foundation on passing and moving.

“But, from when I was there, everything has changed, barring two players. They even got rid of the doctors and the medical staff. Maybe there have not been enough Liverpool players over the last 10 years.

“If there was just one reason, then it would have been fixed. But there have been so many.”

Michael OwenLiverpoolManchester Unitedguardian.co.uk

• Man Utd striker will line-up alongside former team-mates
• Owen uncertain about reaction from Anfield crowd

Michael Owen is to pull on the colours of Liverpool for the first time since leaving the club six years ago after agreeing to brave a potential backlash from Manchester United’s supporters by playing for his old team in Jamie Carragher’s testimonial match. Owen, reviled by some Liverpool fans after crossing one of the game’s oldest divides, is said to be uncertain of the reaction he will get from the Anfield crowd but does not have great expectations considering the abuse when he returned last season for the first time since joining their rivals at Old Trafford.

The former England striker has given his word to Carragher, however, that he will play in the match at Anfield on Saturday week, swapping the red of United for that of the team where he began his career. Sir Alex Ferguson, the United manager, has given him permission to play for 45 minutes and Owen will be in attack for a Liverpool XI taking on an Everton XI.

Carragher has also persuaded Jamie Redknapp, Danny Murphy, Jason McAteer and Emile Heskey to play, but he had told Owen he would understand if he thought it was too delicate for him politically bearing in mind the rivalry between Liverpool and United.

There is also the distinct possibility that United’s fans will not be too impressed about one of their players being willing to wear a Liverpool shirt, especially with their first encounter of the season to follow only two weekends later.

Owen, though, regards Carragher as one of his closest friends in football and the organisers hope the goodwill felt towards the long-serving Liverpool defender will persuade the Anfield crowd to go easy on their former player and maybe even demonstrate some warmth and appreciation for a man who scored over 200 goals for the club in eight years and has been described by Steven Gerrard as “the best striker in the history of Liverpool Football Club.” Nonetheless, it is understood Owen will be given his own security on his way to and from the stadium.

Michael OwenLiverpoolManchester UnitedDaniel Taylorguardian.co.uk

Bringing El Niño to Merseyside was the best piece of business Rafael Benítez is ever likely to conduct

An eternal fascination of games between elite clubs is that sometimes they come down to a duel between two world-class players. For all the sound and fury here, Liverpool and Manchester were prised apart when Fernando Torres went mano e mano with Rio Ferdinand and blasted a goal that blew away the depression settling over Anfield.

Bringing El Niño to Merseyside was the best piece of business Rafael Benítez is ever likely to conduct. Not that joy ever shows on the martinet’s face. After Torres had beaten Ferdinand for speed and strength to breach Edwin van der Sar’s goal in the 65th minute Benítez merely flicked his hand to convey a tactical signal to another Liverpool player and then glanced at his watch, perhaps to make sure he had turned it back an hour. This austere, dispassionate response concealed the scale of Torres’s contribution to the manager’s survival campaign in the wake of four consecutive defeats.

As Benítez said later: “Eighty per cent of Fernando can make the difference.” The other 20% was still in a physiotherapy room. Torres had not trained properly all week. He missed the midweek Champions League defeat against Lyon and seemed unlikely to haul himself back into action for such a frenetic and physical encounter. On the coach on the way to Anfield Benítez gambled, mindful maybe that the alternatives were Andriy Voronin, Dirk Kuyt or David Ngog, who raised his lowly profile with his team’s second, deep into added time.

Liverpool’s alternative motto: Find a corner, then fight your way out. Their almost clinical need for adversity is baffling. A fifth defeat would have matched the club’s worst sequence since 1953. “Playing as a team and working hard the way Liverpool do, we can beat anyone,” Torres said. A player of such lavish gifts is entitled to sprinkle a bit more poetry into his post-match comments. But the foundation of all Liverpool’s efforts is defiance and even Torres reflects that spirit. He can have a war with you or beat you with beauty. This volcanic derby required him to do both.

By the end arguably the world’s best centre-forward could hardly stand. His body trembled with exhaustion and his eyes called out for him to be rescued. After 80 minutes he was replaced by Ngog. The ovation rocked the stadium: a sharp counterpoint to the venom directed at Michael Owen, once of this parish. “Judas, traitor, Manc,” they howled, then chanted “Once a Manc, never a Red.”

In such a febrile atmosphere no allowance was going to be made for the fact that Owen would have returned to Anfield on several occasions since his move to Real Madrid but was not pursued and might have finished up at Stoke or Hull had United not offered him work when his Newcastle contract expired. The denunciation of Owen in an arena where he once performed the Torres role was so fierce that Wayne Rooney made a point of consoling him as Sir Alex Ferguson’s men traipsed off.

Ferguson ruminated on “the wounded animal aspect” of Liverpool’s tenacious performance. “We had to win to get back in the title race,” Torres beamed. For every reveller there is a victim. Somewhere deep in hostile territory Ferdinand would have been agonising over the private battle he lost when Yossi Benayoun, the closest this Liverpool squad have to a Steve McManaman, collected the ball from Kuyt and slipped it down the inside-right channel to bring Torres into combat with the England centre-half.

There was, in Ferdinand’s heavy-footed response to this threat, another hint that he mistrusts his body and lacks the pace and agility to smother all forms of danger, as he can in his pomp. Torres was quicker and more robust as the two reputations came together. As Ferdinand leaned and lagged, Torres composed himself and had time to thump his shot into Van der Sar’s top left-hand corner. The Kop is known for its eruptions of pleasure, belligerence, relief and this one will pass into the top-10 goal celebrations of Benítez’s uneven reign.

Torres has now scored 34 goals in 35 league games at Anfield. Tormenting United’s central defenders is one of his favourite pastimes. Though Ngog later put the game beyond Liverpool, there is no question that industry and organisation alone would not have brought them victory without the brilliance their £26m striker brings to the forward areas.

Frankly, without him, Liverpool are a severely diminished force. It was a measure of Benítez’s desperation that he had to risk him when he “was not 100% fit”. On Tuesday Steven Gerrard limped off against Lyon. Gamble failed. This time it worked. Kuyt (last weekend at Sunderland) and Ngog (against Lyon) had demonstrated the paucity of Liverpool’s resources in the striking department. Whether internal politics or lack of foresight is responsible, the front of this team has been mismanaged and Liverpool’s chances of sustaining this revival hang on Torres’s ability to stay sound in a league that has caused him to be increasingly grumpy and querulous under the weight of incoming challenges.

He may resent the philistines who knock him about and the referees who sometimes fail to protect him but sheer force of talent always carries him to the heart of the drama, where his athleticism and grace usually do the rest.

Premier LeagueLiverpoolManchester UnitedRafael BenítezMichael OwenRio FerdinandPaul Haywardguardian.co.uk