Brian Reece
twitter @oldfattoad
On Saturday we saw a fine Liverpool away performance with the outclassing of WBA in a 2-0 stroll for the Reds.
But most importantly we won without Steven Gerrard or Jamie Carragher in the squad, and maybe that could just be the start of a team at the beginning of evolution and a team that has grasped the reality that Liverpool will be without Gerrard & Carragher more and more.
For years Liverpool have excessively relied on their two finest players and given the duo’s appetite for the club and the game it’s almost short of a miracle that either one of have not had to retired already.
Steven Gerrard trains and plays the game the only way he knows how and that’s at 100mph while Carragher’s fitness levels are so impressive it’s simply stuff of legends.
But time and evolution is friendless and holds no sentiment for anyone, Carragher has been losing pace over the last two seasons and mistakes have started to creep into his game while Gerrard has unfortunately started to become injury prone through bad luck and age.
This does not mean that both players are finished as that would be a ridicules statement or judgment for anyone to imply but as a team Liverpool need to start making preparations for the replacement of both players.
Steven Gerrard in particular is a concern purely because of the type of player he is and the extra dimension he brings to the team but where would you even begin to start looking for another Gerrard, Jamie Carragher on the other hand is replaceable and will be replaced.
We all know what a great servant to Liverpool Jamie has been and all the loyalty he has given the club but Liverpool’s permanent place among the top four and Champions League ambitions do not include Carragher, and to some extent Gerrard comes into the same bracket.
Dalglish has already started looking at replacements for Carragher but also needs to discuss the continuing problems with Daniel Agger with the owners which means Kenny must cover both defenders positions, the capture of Coates is a good start and all the early indications are that the Uruguayan will become a fantastic buy.
Kenny Dalglish faces a challenge to replace Gerrard simply because he is such a fantastic player and with abilities that simply are not available at present, the only fortunate side of this situation for Dalglish is that he has time to find the player he wants to replace Steven with.
Carragher has at least one more season in him but I feel it wont be as a regular and Gerrard has about two to three seasons at most, so does Dalglish go out and spend a large amount of funds on a replacement for Steven in the next year or run the risk of being without Gerrard and not having a world-class replacement?.
Both players are loved by all of us and are legends within Liverpool Football Club but we have to learn to win without them just as we did on Saturday, we need to be competitive and that means finding replacements for star players.
We are heading in the right direction in terms of squad quality but it is paramount that Dalglish adds another class defender and a world-class central midfielder either in the January transfer window or next summers one.
If Liverpool are to capture a top four place in the Premier League on a regular basis we have to learn to beat teams when our star players are not available, the way we controlled the game on Saturday was refreshing and one of surprise due to the early news that Gerrard was not going to feature.
Liverpool would have taken nothing from this type of game if Gerrard and Carragher would have been missing in the past, which is why Saturday’s performance was special for me, it showed we can compete and work as a team even when your captain and defensive rock are missing, did we or could we have shown that sort of fight under Benitez or Hodgson I think not.