A transfer riddle leaves Liverpool fans with more questions than answers
One thing really bugged me about the sale of Robbie Keane last January, six months after his move from Spurs. Why did Rafa buy him for so much money if he wasn’t going to play him? Was it that he realised that he made a mistake or was there another reason for this curious affair? An answer of sorts came in a Times interview with Rafa Benitez recently. He was bought to play in tandem with Gareth Barry:
“The plan was for Barry to play on the left and feed the ball to Robbie Keane, who would play up front with Fernando Torres. This blueprint had to be scrapped. The collateral damage was Keane, who signed from Tottenham Hotspur before the Barry deal had been done. When we wanted to sign Barry, we were sure we were signing a good player with a very good mentality and the quality to play in the Premier League. The priority was Barry, then Keane.”
According to this account, the failure to sign Barry left Keane in the lurch, “collateral damage” in a Benitez grand master plan. So two questions come out of such a disclosure, did Benitez actually want to change his system to accommodate both players? And the second following on from that, would the signing of Barry have been the last piece of the jigsaw which would have helped Liverpool win the title last season?
Dealing with the first question, there really is contradicting interpretations on the signing of Gareth Barry. Was he going to be the replacement for Xabi Alonso rather than solely a new wide left player as Benitez claims? There is some evidence to support that he was a replacement rather than an addition from Benitez during the same interview with the Times:
“We were looking to the future because we knew we needed three or four English players in the squad [for the Champions League], we knew there were rule changes and we needed English players and we were trying to get there early. The only way to do that was to sell [foreign] players and bring money in to sign English players.”
This seems to confirm to me to Xabi Alonso was to move out of the club, perhaps to Juventus, a season earlier than he actually did.
Perhaps though, Benitez was forced to, to finance Barry’s move and when Xabi failed to go last summer, he was left with the smaller, less significant piece of the jigsaw in Robbie Keane. It would explain Keane’s short six month stay at Anfield and Benitez’s own anger at not being in control of financial dealings. For if he had been in charge, the priority would have been Barry, rather than Keane, and in such an eventuality money would have been found to finance the transfer of the Irish striker, perhaps through the sale of Alonso anyhow.
So it seems that Benitez’s own interpretation that Barry was to come in to play on the left side, to provide width and supply for Keane up front in a 4-4-2 formation, still has credibility without debating whether he was Alonso’s replacement. The plan may have been to utilise Barry’s flexibility on the left to provide protection for the back four, meaning there would be less need for a 4-5-1 formation and for Steven Gerrard to play a more attacking role to create chances for Fernando Torres. But why wasn’t Keane played in such a system more regularly in his six months stay? Maybe Benitez thought that with Alonso still at the club, the best policy was to utilize his talents in the tried and tested 4-5-1, leaving Keane out in the cold on the bench.
This leaves us with the intriguing second question, would Liverpool have won the title last season playing such a formation? In my opinion, probably not. The loss of Xabi Alonso, as is evident this season, would have taken away a creative flair and control of games which would leave question marks over how Liverpool would have won games. Having two strikers is all well and good, it is certainly more attacking, but you have to provide chances for them and I believe the replacement of Alonso last season would have had a detrimental effect on chance creation, after all he was Liverpool’s best player last season. Not to denigrate Barry’s abilities, but one of the main reasons Benitez decided to buy him was because he was English and would fit into UEFA’s new rules. On top of this, Benitez saw that his flexibility would allow him to be deployed in more defensive positions, lessening his chance of him being a creative force like Alonso.
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Interesting article but I think this is the reason why rick parry left, rafa didn’t want one without the other and rick parry still paid sooo much for keane, plus I’m not sure the owners have would have funded both players unless we sold a player(alonso) for a significant amount…
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Your article would carry more credence if it was not based on the false premise that keane occupied a bench position. The facts belie this. Keane played most games but invariably found himself subbed due to the innefectual lethargy of his performances [MU game apart]. Latterly his paltry efforts caused benitez to drop him and ultimately cash in on Harry Redknapp’s desperation to retrieve him for Spurs.
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Albert, go to the Times article, Benitez interview. quoting Benitez “Keane was a very good signing and everybody knew that he was a goal threat, he did not settle down in our team for different reasons and we needed to do something, so we did it quickly. With other players around it would have been easier for Keane. We played a different way.” He is asserting that he was sold not because of his poor play, but because he didn’t fit into the system he was using with Gerrard behind Torres. If he had ‘other players around’ like Barry his move may have been more successful.
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Thanks David. But I think ‘not settle down’ is a Rafa euphamism for ‘was utter poo’. Thing is I know what I saw. keane played most games up to November and was substituted in many of them. His form was acceptable in 3 games – MU, PSV away and the game against a poor defence when he notched two goals. When harry Rknapp came knocking Rafa bit his hand off. And was spot on to do so.
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