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Fernando Torres: End of the Affair?

“Liverpool have always been a club with a mentality, an identity, that I like. They are a club trabajador [humble, hard working, people’s club]. They are a team that maybe doesn’t have as many stars as other clubs but it has traditionally been as successful, or more so, because of the attitude, the values, the mentality. Liverpool are a huge club but with a humility about them that attracted me. Liverpool haven’t won the Premier League for a long time, but they’ve had success and still have a real ambition to win things. That was the perfect combination: a successful, big club but one that still had real hunger. That’s not easy to find…”

The above quote was uttered by Fernando Torres, speaking to FourFourTwo magazine, during his first season at Liverpool. Some three years later Torres would be handing in a transfer request in the wake of renewed interest and a rejected bid from Chelsea.

This raises two issues: what has happened during the interim, and why would Chelsea Football Club appeal to him?

I’ll tackle the latter part first simply because it relates to Torres’ words at the head of the article. Torres was answering a two-word question from the interviewer: “Why Liverpool?”

He has never been shy in comparing the attitude and mentality of Liverpool with that of his first love, Atlético Madrid. Torres takes pride in his working class roots, and is known as a quiet, humble character off the pitch - more interested in walking his dogs than the trappings of fame and wealth. Atléti supporters, much like Liverpool’s, see things with a sense of us-against-the-world. Not the richest, not the most glamorous, but with an innate pride and identity that is defined by their football club.

Chelsea were a middling football club with one league title to their name when they were bought by a Russian billionaire in 2003. Before then, the club had done well to establish themselves towards the top end of the English league during the latter half of the 1990s and the early 2000s, and had picked up a number of trophies during this time. However, they had overspent to enable these achievements, and before Roman Abramovich intervened were in financial dire straits.

Following the Abramovich takeover the club spent hundreds of millions assembling a formidable squad, also taking Manchester United’s chief executive, Peter Kenyon, and Porto’s Champions League-winning coach Jose Mourinho. What followed was success unparalleled in the club’s history. The club became European giants overnight, and were happy to let everyone know as much, with Mourinho and Kenyon forming a sort of smarm tag-team.

They were all-too happy to bask in their sporting superiority in a manner not unlike Real Madrid, a club we can safely assume to be Torres’ least favourite in football. If Liverpool and Atléti were Rocky Balboa, then Chelsea and Real Madrid are more like Ivan Drago: well-funded, slick, powerful, and arguably a bit soulless.

All this begs the question now: “Why Chelsea?”

The simplest answer you’ll get to this is that Chelsea are in an immediate position to challenge for the top honours. They are current English champions, and though an inexplicable run of poor form has practically killed off their hopes of retaining the title, they still possess a very strong team.

Liverpool on the other hand have declined from a title challenge in 2008-2009, to a poor 7th place finish last season, and the nadir of Roy Hodgson’s brief stint as manager this season. They have sold two of their key players - Xabi Alonso and Javier Mascherano - and been unable to replace them with players of equal quality.

Following that title-chasing season, when the club finished second with a points total that would have won the league in many other seasons, the club were operating a sell-to-buy policy due to the disastrous ownership of Tom Hicks and George Gillett. It was after that season that the club should have been looking to bolster the squad with at least one top-class starter to give the side the extra cutting edge it needed.

Instead the club lost its metronome and most important player, Xabi Alonso, as well as influential squad members Sami Hyypia and Alvaro Arbeloa. Direct replacements were signed, but overall the squad was weakened and the team struggled the following season. That ‘extra edge’ signing was never even on the cards as financial problems at the club deepened.

Liverpool are only just emerging from those dark days, and post-Hicks, Gillett and Hodgson (not to mention former managing director Christian Purslow) the club is in a position to start moving forward again, as the signing of Luis Suárez from Ajax will attest. The problem as far as Torres is allegedly concerned is that too large a rebuilding job is required for the club to be in a position to challenge for the title and Champions League once more.

As I see it, Liverpool need five first team signings to be in a position to think about such things. The club’s new owners have spoken about challenging for the title in three years time. By that point Torres will be 29-years-old and could feasibly still have no club honours to his name bar a Spanish second division title won at Atléti. Torres is not Steven Gerrard, who also famously flirted with a move to Chelsea due to a desire to be part of a championship-winning team. Gerrard was playing for his boyhood idols in his hometown and ultimately couldn’t tear himself away. Torres has already left his behind.

Many have reasoned that Chelsea require rebuilding just as much as Liverpool, but while our owners talk about replicating the Arsenal model of team building - with an eye on the forthcoming financial fair play rules - Chelsea still carry the financial clout to buy a team in a single transfer window, and their ageing squad is still very much superior to Liverpool’s. And even with the promise of new financial rules you can’t bet against clubs being able circumvent them.

Other rumours to have done the rounds are that Torres was one of a number of players to have influenced the decision to part company with Rafael Benitez, and that Torres has a grievance with how the club have managed the injuries that ultimately put paid to his involvement in Spain’s World Cup victory. At that tournament he was certainly there in body, but was a shadow of the player that had spent the past years terrorising defences in the Premier League and Europe.

Such stories can be dismissed as the idle talk of the internet, but Torres’ mood has clearly darkened since he gave the following quote in November 2009:

“Each player has one place in the world where he is happy and as a result he plays well. My place is Anfield. Every game I can play there I feel good.”

Ultimately, Liverpool fans will be able to extrapolate Torres’ motives by what happens in the next few days. If the club is strong-armed into selling before the end of the January window, then Torres will reason that he feels himself in a better position to win titles at Chelsea in the short term and in future. That would be his prerogative, though his previous comments about club identity and spirit would have to be questioned.

Chelsea’s image has softened post-Mourinho and Kenyon, and they currently have a manager in Ancelotti that I greatly admire, both for his ability and how he conducts himself in public. He carries a sense of dignity and class that the club has previously lacked, exceptions such as Gianfranco Zola aside. But no-one could claim that the modern Chelsea is anything but an artificial creation funded by the super-rich, much like Manchester City now. Of course it would be fantastic to have a bottomless well of cash with which to construct a side, but any sense of identity you had previously carried gets lost in the hoopla.

I personally cannot see it being a case of Torres being swayed by the bright lights of west London, as other players often are. Torres and his wife Olalla shun the celebrity lifestyle and have recently had their second child. Their preference appears to be for a quiet, settled family life.

This brings us back to the conclusion that Torres has reached a point of impatience at not winning major club honours and is willing to forgo the embrace of ‘his’ people for the promise tangible rewards. The indie music fan in me would refer to this as ‘selling out’, though such concepts don’t really exist within football. Ambition and success are paramount to any athlete worth their salt.

Still, the overwhelming feeling would be one of massive disappointment. Torres is adored by Liverpool fans. Like Pepe Reina, he is seen as someone that ‘gets it’, or at least ‘got it’. He came to Liverpool from a foreign city and embraced the spirit of the club and the city, and the fans responded to that. Now he is looking to duck out just as the club has found some long-needed stability and the promise of progress. To a set of fans that fought tooth and nail against the previous regime and are finally looking forward, the timing is bewildering.

If it ends up being a case of posturing for an improved contract - and I really can’t believe it would be - then again the feeling would be one of disappointment. Of course it would be a relief to keep him, and I personally would sanction a new deal on improved terms if it achieved just that, but the relationship between Torres and the fans would be damaged at a time when he has rediscovered his motivation under Kenny Dalglish. Torres is seen in a different light to the likes of Wayne Rooney and Carlos Tevez. To have him re-bracketed with players now derided as mercenaries would be hard to swallow. Again, from ‘get it’ to ‘got it’.

Personally, I don’t believe this story is run yet. It is perhaps naivety on my part to have real world expectations of any emotional bonds rich young professional athletes might feel, but I can still see a twist in the story. The club has fought against the wishes of wantaway stars before now and convinced them to stay. Torres is playing well again under a man he is known to greatly admire. The next three days will tell if time has run out to convince Torres of the club’s ambitions and plans.

The trabajador must fight for the soul of one of his own.

The new, submissive Liverpool FC under Roy Hodgson

There has been an ever-increasing amount of hot air and bluster surrounding Liverpool Football Club these past few years. The club has been a well-documented mess behind the scenes under the stewardship of Tom Hicks and George Gillett, with fans veering between despair and fury from moment-to-moment. But with the dark days of Hicks-Gillett apparently about to end, full focus can return to matters on the pitch.

The purpose of this piece is to attempt to present a rational analysis of what has been happening on the pitch so far this season, and how the tactical approach during the nascent Roy Hodgson era contrasts to Rafael Benitez’s side. Of course, the use of the word ‘nascent’ is pertinent as it is very early into the new manager’s reign, but early tactical trends displayed are consistent with Hodgson’s M.O. Moreover, Hodgson might not last long enough at the helm to warrant long term analysis.

Off The Ball

Earlier this season Andy Gray remarked that Liverpool’s set-up under Hodgson thus far was not too dissimilar to Benitez’s approach - two holding midfielders, with an advanced midfielder behind a single forward. In a crosses marked on a blackboard approach to presenting formations, this is correct. However, herein lies the danger of reducing formations to a series of numbers and dashes, whether it be 4-4-2, 4-2-3-1, 4-3-3, and so on. Two teams featuring the same names placed into the same framework can still be markedly different from one another in practice.

Both Benitez and Hodgson generally set up their sides in variations on 4-2-3-1/4-4-2/4-4-1-1, but there are key distinctions to be made. The biggest difference between the two managers’ approaches is in how they set up their team off the ball.

Now, at this point I feel it worth noting that I agree with the broad assertion that both managers are defensive-minded by nature. (Although I’d also like to note that Andy Gray’s assertion before the Manchester City match that Roy Hodgson was about to “let the reds off the leash” by fielding two strikers in that game was laughable. However, the “two strikers = more attacking” debate is one for another day.) Yet there is more than one way to stop the opposition, and the two managers are quite different on that front.

During these early days Hodgson’s Liverpool have set up with a compact defensive line that has never strayed too far away from the 18 yard line, with a compact midfield four not too far ahead. Then, one of Fernando Torres or David Ngog has led the line, with a revolving list of second strikers supporting. One thing that has been notable in these early days is the large gap between the team’s striking spearhead and everybody else on the pitch, though this is something I will return to later on.

When off the ball, Hodgson’s side retreats deep into its own half and forms a narrow double barrier of midfield and defence in front of the opposition. Possession is ceded, and the onus is placed upon the opposition to penetrate these two static lines. One thing Hodgson’s sides do not tend to engage in is pressing the opposition, as Danny Murphy’s quotes comparing the approaches of Hodgson and new Fulham boss Mark Hughes reveal:

“Off the ball [under Hughes] maybe we’re trying to win it a bit higher up the pitch, maybe take a few more risks. With Roy we tended to drop off more and fill in the gaps.”

The rationale for this kind of approach is simple: when you do it well, and your side maintains its shape, it can be incredibly difficult for opposition teams to break you down. Teams cannot get in behind your defence through the centre with a ball played over the top, it requires great passing, movement and technique to play through your defence on the ground, and - providing you have defenders who are strong in the air - you’re well equipped to deal with crosses from teams that will attack you from out wide.

Comparatively, while similarly concerned with stopping the opposition as a first priority, Benitez’s Liverpool had a tendency to press teams aggressively as a means of preventing the opposition from playing through them. Greatly influenced by Arrigo Sacchi’s AC Milan side, Benitez liked his team - remaining compact in terms of the distance between defence, midfield and attack - to squeeze up against their opponents while out of possession. For every negative pass played by the opposition, the team was to push forward as one block, with the relatively positioned player systematically closing down the man in possession.

However, this wasn’t exclusively the team’s way of working off the ball, with Benitez - like Sacchi - prizing adaptability and game intelligence above all other characteristics. Thereby there would be situations where the team would retreat into a half-press, limited to their own half, with the pressing forwards and midfielders withdrawing again when the ball was played back into the opposition’s half. This would usually be utilised when already leading a match, with the aim of conserving energy and drawing the opposition forward in order to counter-attack quickly. Similarly, the team could also retreat deep in a style similar to Hodgson’s side when circumstances dictated and the team was under pressure. Another method of defending more readily used by Benitez’s side when possible was by maintaining possession for long periods, though this approach was hindered when the side lost Xabi Alonso.

But what is clear is that more so than Hodgson, Benitez tended to mix up the team’s approach to defending, depending on the opposition’s characteristics or in-game circumstances.

The Turnover and Problems Faced

One area of similarity between both managers, though, is the use of the counter as a primary mode of attack in open play. It is in the moments after the turnover of possession when their sides will seek to exploit the opposition’s vulnerability.

For Benitez, this approach was most memorably effective in high-profile Champions League home games against the likes of Real Madrid (2009) and Juventus (2005). Against high profile, technically proficient (and arguably stronger, at least on paper) teams, Liverpool pressed hard and high up the pitch, challenging aggressively for any second balls, with the attacking midfielders quickly supporting the line-leading striker. Opponents that were used to easily dominating possession in matches were rushed into giving the ball away in dangerous areas.

The key here for Benitez’s side was in the fact that the turnover of possession was happening in close proximity to the opposition’s goal, increasing the likelihood of creating goalscoring opportunities. Liverpool were able to exploit the disorganisation their high pressing caused defensively as opposition players were found off-guard and out-of-position.

Of course, these are very famous individual examples, reflecting some of Benitez’s greatest successes. However, that is not to say that Liverpool under Benitez could generally be regarded of proponents of swashbuckling, aggressive football. There were many occasions when Liverpool struggled and were poor when in possession, despite being excellent at recovering it. Moreover, the side had real problems in creatively overcoming lesser opponents.

It was against those sides that would readily cede possession to Liverpool and sit back that Benitez’s side mostly struggled. When playing against ‘superior’ opposition and taking the role of underdog, the team could use the pressing and counter-attacking approach to good effect. Against sides that would ‘park the bus’, the team - not always blessed with great, creative or pacey individuals - would struggle to make attacking inroads. More often than not their superiority would tell, but in cases where they couldn’t score the goal that would draw opponents out of their deep, defensive shape, Liverpool would find themselves drawing matches they would be expected to win - sometimes even losing to a sucker-punch goal or two.

Hodgson’s side, by contrast, are set up in much the same way as the opponents that have so frustrated Liverpool for many years. With a deep defensive line and a lack of pressure on the ball, the side must rely on a more direct approach or set pieces when looking to attack the opposition’s goal. Whereas before, when Pepe Reina would pick up a loose ball from an opposition attack, the team would quickly push forward, with two players taking up advanced wide positions on either side for a quickly distributed kick or throw. Now, the team seems stuck in its deep, compact shape - with the wide players tucked in, and Fernando Torres often the lone central target for any kind of direct distribution.

This role - that of a hold-up target man - doesn’t especially suit Torres. While he is capable of holding the ball up, he is at his best when facing the opposition’s goal. This goes without saying how 3 years of solid football appears to have sapped his physical power. Indeed, in the summer Hodgson spoke of seeking to buy a striker “of a certain profile”. The fact that Liverpool were so heavily linked to the likes of Carlton Cole and Mario Gomez suggests that Hodgson wanted a more powerful target man type - someone who could play with his back to goal and hold the ball up, while the deeper, narrower midfield caught up with the play.

This was how Fulham operated under Hodgson, with Bobby Zamora able to receive long balls upfield with his back to goal and hold the ball up. Daniel Agger was allegedly quoted recently as saying that Hodgson likes to “play football in attack, but not at the back”. Though possibly misquoted or set up by the Danish press, the intimation is that defenders are to recover possession and get the ball forward quickly and directly, from where moves can be built. If this is indeed the case, it would lend weight to the idea that Hodgson requires a target man, as well as offering some understanding to Liverpool’s attacking problems this year.

Regression

Further problems to be found with this approach continue to reveal themselves with every stuttering, disjointed Liverpool performance. Roy Hodgson inherited a team that was very good at recovering possession quickly - never allowing opponents to find any rhythm - but sometimes poor when faced with teams that wouldn’t play into their counter-attacking strengths. Hodgson’s tactics have taken away the team’s greatest strength, and compounded their greatest weakness.

In the second game of the season against Manchester City, it was quite astonishing to see a Liverpool side allow its opponents free rein in midfield. By offering no pressure while out of possession the team looked all-at-sea defensively, and for the first time in a long time we saw a Liverpool side passively allow the other side as much time and space as they liked in the first two thirds of the field. Daniel Agger, makeshift and concussed at left-back, was repeatedly embarrassed by Adam Johnson. Yaya Toure, Gareth Barry and Nigel De Jong bypassed Lucas and Steven Gerrard at will in midfield. It was the worst performance by a Liverpool team off the ball I have seen in five or six years (though there have been many bad ones on the ball in that time).

And with the shift to a deeper defensive line and narrower team set-up, Liverpool’s problems in attack have been made even worse. Much has been made of Fernando Torres’ problems with form and fitness, and those points are very valid. But arguments against Torres’ attitude and body language must take into account how isolated he has become from his team mates. Torres is now only receiving high, difficult balls, playing almost exclusively with his back to goal and being expected to attack teams on his own when he is - as mentioned - half fit and out-of-form.

One of the players bought to help Liverpool overcome their attacking deficiencies, Glen Johnson, is looking more confused and drained of confidence by the game. Johnson is never likely to win any plaudits as a great defender, but last season he was one of Liverpool’s strongest attacking outlets. Playing in a deeper, more rigid team he appears unsure of whether he should move forward or stay back, attack wide or move centrally. Prior to this season Johnson was occasionally liable to attack through the centre of the field to good effect, knowing that someone would move into a position on the right in order to offer an outlet out wide. Now, with Liverpool’s wide players remaining tucked inside (unsurprising, when central-midfielder Raul Meireles is used as a right-midfielder), Johnson’s occasional central forays are only serving to congest and narrow the play.

Outcomes

As stated at the beginning of this article, there remains some question over whether Roy Hodgson will be allowed to remain in his position if results and performances continue to slide. Fan unrest - unusually for Liverpool fans - is quickening. Many are still upset at Benitez’s departure. But regardless, with Liverpool currently in the relegation places and the ownership situation appearing to be drawing to a close, scrutiny of the team’s - and manager’s - performances will only increase from here.

Many have argued that Hodgson needs time and financial backing in order to get the team performing again. Many have argued that he is only picking up the pieces of Benitez’s supposedly failed reign. But the fact remains that Hodgson has inherited a team that - by and large - has been expected and used to being the dominant side in matches. Benitez’s greatest feats were in those games when his side weren’t expected to be dominant, instilling a belief that the team could beat any opponent through intelligence, adaptability and unity. However, Hodgson is now setting up the team to approach every game as the underdogs, no matter the opposition - attempting to ‘park the bus’ in front of teams that would expect to ‘park the bus’ themselves. The team is in the process of losing its identity.

With time and money, Hodgson’s vision for the Liverpool team could be fulfilled, but the question many Liverpool fans will continue to ask is: would it be a vision worth seeing?