Stevie G’s year of woe

If it can ever be possible to feel something approaching pity for a mega-rich Premier League footballer who has won the Champions League, captained his country and been justly feted as one of the best players of his generation, then look no further than Steven Gerrard.

Even if Liverpool manage to restore some of their battered pride against Manchester United tomorrow, 2014 will go down as an annus horribilis for Gerrard, a year which began ripe with so much promise for club and country ending, instead, with nothing tangible to show for his efforts in the trophy cabinet, while his own role at his boyhood club – and, indeed, his very future at Anfield – is under more critical scrutiny than ever before.

When Liverpool travelled to Old Trafford last March, they did so as an old empire apparently on the rise again, Gerrard scoring twice from the spot as they brushed aside their struggling arch-rivals 3-0.

The second week in April saw Liverpool snatch a thrilling 3-2 win against title rivals Manchester City, a game remembered for skipper Gerrard’s impassioned words, as much imploring as inspirational, in the post-match huddle: “This does not fucking slip now”.

And so what happened on the 27th of that month at Anfield was almost beyond irony, as Stevie G gave way to ‘oh, gee’, a literal slip allowing Demba Ba through to score for Chelsea in a 2-0 win which opened the door to Man City’s title triumph and left Gerrard’s ears turned redder than his shirt by mocking chants at every ground in England.

The summer’s World Cup offered no consolation for the Liverpool man’s second-place finish in the league, England’s dismal campaign in Brazil summed up by Gerrard’s most meaningful contribution: an inadvertent headed assist for his club team mate Luis Suarez to run through and score Uruguay’s winning goal in a 2-1 victory.

We now know, of course, Suarez would not be with Gerrard for the new season, an incalculable loss to Liverpool for which no amount of scattergun, cheque-book management on the part of Brendan Rodgers has been able to compensate. The silver lining to the cloud of the previous season’s near-miss came in the form of qualification for the Champions League but here too Liverpool’s shocking regression in the space of eight months was all too painfully evident in the 1-1 draw with Basel on Tuesday which ended their interest at the group stage.

Even with an estimated €120m worth of talent deemed only good enough to start on the bench, Liverpool were out-thought, out-fought and, when it came to the game’s finer aspects, simply outplayed by a side which can hardly be counted among the heavyweights of European football. And this, at Anfield, on the kind of death or glory night which the faithful had hoped would make for another luminous addition to the club’s European folklore.

True, the home side belatedly made a connection with that rich tradition by attempting to mount a stirring comeback, inspired by a brilliantly executed free-kick which saw Gerrard wheeling away, arms outstretched and pumping in a manner which would have had the Kop briefly dreaming of 10 years before when their hero had done something similar against Olympiakos and set in train the sequence of events which would end with that improbable and unforgettable night of triumph in Istanbul.

But this time it was not to be, Liverpool failing not only to row back the years but even just the months to earlier this year when their thrilling football had seen them on the very brink of ending their protracted title drought.

The loss of Suarez to Barcelona and Daniel Sturridge to injury has robbed Liverpool of both creativity and a cutting edge, the latter problem crystallised by the fact that, as Suarez was on the eve of breaking his Nou Camp duck in Barca’s 3-1 defeat of PSG in the Champions League, Brendan Rodgers was presiding over Liverpool’s last rites in Europe with defender Martin Skrtel as the spearhead of their attack.

While analysis of Liverpool’s decline has almost become an industry in itself, it’s tempting to go back to Steven Gerrard’s slip-up against Chelsea in March and see it as the tipping point for the wholesale slippage which has subsequently occurred at the club. The closer you are to the summit, the harder it must be to cope with the realisation that you’re not going to make it to the top and, it’s as if, at that moment, and with that defeat, all confidence, self-belief and spirit was drained out of Anfield.

Which is not to say Gerrard is primarily culpable. Quite the opposite. The debate whether he should play deeper or more forward, or whether he should play at all, might be theoretically appropriate for a midfielder of 34 whose game has always been more about power than poise but, even in that cameo against Basel this week, there was clear evidence he will continue to rage against the dying of the light.

But that’s fallow ground for optimism as disjointed Liverpool travel to face a United side who, despite a recent upsurge in results, are themselves still in search of a convincing identity under Louis van Gaal.

In this coming together of two wounded giants of the English game, you suspect it will be the team most successful at masking its deficiencies which will come out on top. And, if that is the case, it’s United’s ability to atone for their defensive frailties by finding the back of the opposition net, which suggests a year of crushing disappointment for Steven Gerrard has only yet more misery in store.