Winning is not everything, Bill Shankly once said; it’s the only thing. Thus will Real Madrid, for which above all or anyone else victory is paramount, be unhappy about winning one and losing one. Shankly’s Liverpool used to be in that league.
Thus Michael Owen prepares for life at the Bernabeu, but Patrick Vieira, somewhat surprisingly, remains at Arsenal. Next time the topic of loyalty in the game crops up, let us not have the lazy generalisation that overseas players do not show the same commitment to clubs as the home-grown.
Liverpool’s victory in Graz in midweek showed, on the surface, that there is life without Owen. If the club thinks that all is well, however, Steven Gerrard having signed a new deal and scored twice to confirm himself their prime asset, then they are kidding themselves. One Liver bird does not make a season.
In fact, the Owen sale tells of turbulence within the club, of transition at best but turmoil at worst. The new manager, Rafael Benitez, was hired to take them that next step towards winning the championship. They might just be dropping further away.
Owen, it is believed, did not take to Benitez and had at least a couple of disagreements with him, indeed. Benitez in turn apparently did not consider Owen worth the £100 000 a week he was asking. That is £10-million for two seasons. Now Liverpool are about to find out the cost of replacing him, in fees as well as wages. And merchandise.
The willingness to sell Owen makes no sense at all, either in footballing or business terms, certainly not at the cut-price £8-million fee (when Didier Drogba goes for more than £20-million?), plus a make-weight. He has had injuries and, yes, he had only a year left on his contract. But they had a guarantee of goals that any replacement is not sure to provide as he settles in.
Liverpool also had the public-relations element: a native son, symbol of the club, a totem for fans. Better, surely, to do a deal for a few more years at the end of which his value and the market might be more buoyant. Owen, in theory, should still be a few years from his prime, after all.
Had Gérard Houllier stayed, that would probably have been the scenario. Owen has always talked, even recently, about wanting to remain at the club. Benitez, however, is intent on establishing his own regime at the Melwood training ground, one with which Owen could not have been happy. The Spaniard is clearly a talented coach, given the wonders he worked at Valencia, but this is a key early moment for his management.
One wonders what the club’s potential new chairperson, Steve Morgan, thinks of it all. The current captain, David Moores, seasick in the choppy waters of late, is said to be ready to accept the Morgan money that the club apparently need to bridge the gap between them, Arsenal, Chelsea and Manchester United. It could all leave the chief executive, Rick Parry, eyeing the FA’s equivalent position.
Towards the end of last season, Morgan was critical of the Anfield regime, citing a lack of passion for the red jersey. The home-grown players of the 1960s, 1970s and 1980s possessed it in abundance, he said, unlike the current crop.
Now Benitez has lost two local lads in Danny Murphy and Owen. Murphy, indeed, said that he chose Charlton, rather than Tottenham, because he did not wish to work again under a foreign-style coaching set-up and preferred the Englishness at the Valley, where Alan Curbishley is building up a quietly impressive portfolio.
Rather than Antonio Nunez, Benitez now needs to make a significant signing, someone like Pablo Aimar from his previous club Valencia, a creative player capable of exciting the Liverpool public and getting them on his side. The mood, particularly with the departure of Owen, is one of scepticism, if not suspicion.
Naturally, good results will soften that mood. Houllier, in common with Arsène Wenger when he first arrived, sought to retain an English core to the team but it seems a policy that has had its day. Only Sir Alex Ferguson and Sir Bobby Robson continue to retain that belief at the top of the Premiership.
With the demise of his old guard, Wenger now introduces few Englishmen, though he will point out that Vieira’s length of service at the club makes him as Arsenal as any domestic player coming through the ranks. The breakdown of the move to Real may have had more to do with a disagreement over personal terms, but the feeling remains that Vieira will still give his all, despite any disappointment, as long as freedom from injury permits.
And so the Premiership loses another English player it can ill afford to. —