5 stars wrote:Over the last couple weeks there has been a lot of talk about Gerrard's position in the team. There has been a lot of talk of weather or not Gerrard should be played in a central role. I decided to look at the possible partnerships if he was to play in a central role.
He would either partner Alonso or Sissoko, both partnerships have their fair share of problems. The Gerrard/Sissoko partnership is one option, the problem is Sissoko is not a natural defensive midfielder. He tends to play in front of Alonso, stopping attacks before they happen and regularly winning the ball back.
Gerrard would naturally want to play futher up the pitch, so you would have two central midfielders who would be more efficient playing in more of a advanced positions. The other alternative is a partnership with Alonso. The problem is, Alonso is more of a with-draw playmaker, similar to Pirlo. He is to good a player (technically) to be used as holding midfielder.
A partnership of Gerrard/Alonso would present similar problems to what the Gerrard/Lampard partnership for England did. Basically they wouldn't compliment each others natural game, they would rather hamper or restrict. It wouldn't work.
I agree with you entirely about a Gerrard-Sissoko partnership.
I disagree about Gerrard and Alonso, however. Alonso naturally sits deeper, in the "holding" role (although he's much more than that) and so Stevie's all-actionm style will not hamper his game too much. In fact, I don't think Alonso's game has very much similarity to Lampard's at all since Lampard is a poor-man's Steven Gerrard: always trying to get forward and shoot from the edge of the box.
In theory, Gerrard and Alonso should work a treat as a CM partnership. They have not hit the heights as a partnership in the past, I think, because Gerrard tried to do too much. He'd drop back to help win the ball and often ended up too close to Xabi rather than offering an outlet. Now that we have a better squad and a better grasp of Rafa's tactics, I would think that Gerrard no longer feels the need to be everywhere and do everything himself. This would free up Alonso to do what he does so well and they could really work as a unit.
Having said that, Sissoko is an immense asset and we're a better side with all 3 on the pitch. As such, Stevie will start games out wide for the foreseeable.
