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By Wayne Veysey at Anfield
Nov 8, 2010 5:10:00 AM
Like all of the managerial brotherhood, Roy Hodgson rails firmly against the cult of the individual in a sport where the team ethic is prized highest.
But the Liverpool boss has also been around the block long enough to know that the best-laid plans are pretty much useless without heavy artillery to carry them out.
Hodgson has been waiting so long for Fernando Torres to regain the powers that once sent even the world’s most assured center-halves to the psychiatrist’s couch that they had almost taken on a mystical dimension.
He had been forced to defend his player by saying that he looked sharp in training, when all the evidence during match day was that the Spaniard was a fumbling, stumbling shadow of his instinctive former self. Whether it was through a shortage of fitness, interest or confidence, it did not reflect well on his manager.
The knife that had hovered around Hodgson’s back as Liverpool sunk into the bottom three and a Tom Hicks and George Gillett-inspired depression has edged away after a cathartic five-match run that began inauspiciously with a 0-0 draw in Napoli and followed with four consecutive victories. The last of these, against the Premier League champions, was, given the caliber of the opponent and the dynamism of Liverpool’s performance, easily the most impressive.
Torres played no part in the third of those wins, when one-man whirlwind Steven Gerrard provided the cake mixture, the icing and the cherry against Napoli at Anfield last Thursday.
But, while being way below his devastating best in the first two, the Spaniard had still scored the winner against Blackburn Rovers and teed up Maxi Rodriguez’s clincher against Bolton Wanderers with a clever back-heel.
Yet, even the president, chairman or secretary of the Torres fan club would be hard still scored the winner against Blackburn Rovers and teed up Maxi Rodriguez’s clincher against Bolton Wanderers with a clever back-heel.
Yet, even the president, chairman or secretary of the Torres fan club would be hard pushed to argue that it was the same ‘El Nino’ who had been taken into Kop hearts during his first three seasons at Anfield and defiantly clasped to its bosom yest any better endowed club had tried to seduce him away from his adopted home.At times this season, watching Torres has been excruciating. His first touch has resembled a misdirected five-yard pass, he has had the acceleration of a people carrier and, most damning of all, displayed an alarming unwillingness to chase back.
With the Spaniard barely deserving of a place in the team, Liverpool’s 4-2-3-1 system, with the striker as its apex, and which had been devised by Rafael Benitez to get the best out of him, looked unimaginably dreary and cautious.
Unable to rely on Torres’ brilliance, Hodgson, who has made his reputation as an astute organizer specializing in backs-against-the-wall defiance interspersed with occasional stardust, was making even Rafael Benitez look like an adrenaline junkie.
However, it was Hodgson’s tactics that were at the heart of comfortably Liverpool’s best performance of the season. Fit-again Dirk Kuyt was dragged in from the right flank to force John Obi Mikel out of his leisurely stride and provide some distraction to John Terry and Alex. Raul Meireles was deployed out wide to keep Ashley Cole busy, allowing Gerrard to form a central alliance with Lucas that was rich in energy, enterprise and enthusiasm.
Hodgson’s tactics provided the perfect springboard for what Liverpool worshipers hope will be a rebirth of their beloved ‘Nando’. In many ways, it was good old 4-4-2, or 4-4-1-1 if you’re being really picky, given that Kuyt’s starting position was 10 or 15 yards behind Torres.
Back to his best | Torres put his stumbling form behind him to score two brilliant goals
In the first half, it worked to perfection as Chelsea were blown away by the sheer pace and intensity of Liverpool’s play.
Invited to arch behind Terry and Ashley Cole by Kuyt’s superbly measured ball in the 11thminute, Torres galloped away and lifted the ball precisely over Petr Cech and into the net. Thirty-three minutes later, he showed the variety in his repertoire by cutting swiftly inside Branislav Ivanovic and delivering a curling right-foot shot from the edge of the box beyond Cech’s grasp. Two opportunistic strikes of differing, but equal brilliance.
His Premier League record at Anfield now reads an incredible 44 goals in 47 appearances. In total, he has scored 76 goals in 129 appearances for the club. Even in this, a season that has begun so dismally for player and club, there have been four goals, each of them crucial, in 14 matches.
Credit to Hodgson for his willingness to tear up a well-thumbed tactical script and for coaxing a performance so solid that Carlo Ancelotti acknowledged afterwards how Liverpool had defended supremely as a team over 90 minutes and deserved to win. Finally, here was the hugely admired manager that Liverpool had enticed from west London in the summer.
Yet for all the inspiration of Gerrard, the leadership of Jamie Carragher and the selfless running of Lucas and Kuyt, Liverpool would not have chalked up three points without Torres rising to the occasion against one of his favorite opponents.
The Liverpool No.9 is a strike weapon with few equals. "One always hopes that playing at this level you have got that quality of front player," said Hodgson. You sense Torres will have to remain at his best for the Hodgson era to be remembered fondly by generations to come.
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