14 Mar 2012

Souness: 'Super' Suarez is still missing *one* special skill. Is he right?

Last night, Luis Suarez, Steven Gerrard and Andy Carroll started a league game together for the first time this season (!), and they worked together well to help the club to comfortable victory over Everton. The dominant partnership on the night, however, was Gerrard-Suarez, not Suarez-Carroll, and although the latter partnership has potential, Liverpool legend Graeme Souness argues that it's still lacking a couple of fundamental ingredients.

Summarising the game for Sky Sports*, Souness described Suarez as a 'super player', but admitted that Carroll still had some way to go before becoming an important player for Liverpool. On the subject of the Suarez-Carroll partnership, he observed:

"I'm surprised that they [Suarez-Carroll] haven't struck up a really solid partnership.

"The thing that makes great partnerships is both players have to get amongst the goals, and they haven't done that enough".


Suarez had a good game and created two goals for hat-trick hero Steven Gerrard, but the fact remains that he's scored only two goals in the last 16 Premier League games, which is not really good enough for a top class striker.

Souness was full of praise for Suarez's qualities, but argued that he's missing one important thing in his all round game:

"If there's one thing Luis Suarez doesn't have, it's what Rushie had: over 10 yards, you're not catching Rush".

Suarez is also missing another one of Rushie's great qualities: finishing ability. Against Everton again, he had several great chances and missed them all.

The one that stands out is his first-half shot from Andy Carroll's knock-down; Suarez was one-on-one with Tim Howard and he hit the ball straight at the keeper. If he'd just had the awareness to dink the ball either side of Howard, he would've scored.

Fourth place is still mathematically possible, but Souey believes the chance has gone for Liverpool:

"They [Liverpool] are 10 points adrift, with 30 points to play for; it's not impossible but it's a big ask for them now".

Imagine if Liverpool went on a 10 game winning-run. How amazing would that be?

Jaimie Kanwar


27 comments:

  1. If Suarez had more quality players (like him)to play with than I'm sure he would score more goals. Maradona would have struggled if he played with Adam, Henderson,Spearing and Caroll. YNWA

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  2. I don't really rate anything that Souness has to say.

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  3. Maybe he was trying to look good for psg, hopefully not

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  4. how different things could have been had the gomes bid come off. then we'd have the deadly forward we crave, and even though the rest of kennys buys have been dross(enrique aside), we'd still have a lethal forward line. Carroll not performing is the most painful of all.
    Adam needs to stay well an truly on the bench, he is pants, as are henderson and downing.

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  5. Not even a 10 game run will get us 4th.

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  6. Ah that old chestnut. 

    Most half-decent players would look good in a team mostly full of top players and well-oiled side. Sometimes it is possible to polish a turd

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  7. He really isn't good as most of the fans make him out to be....yet.

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  8. didnt realise to be a world class striker you had to guarentee 30+ goals a season!! wat a load of tosh. this time last season and the start of this one, everyone wanted him. hes basically had the sh#t kicked out of him and been the victim of a witch hunt. (welcome to england) the better you do the more we will try f#ck you over!! the boy is low on confidence. there are not many in this league close to his natural ability.
    best game carroll has played, looked loads better on the ball and helped the team at both ends.
    by the way only 2 players promise 30+ goals a season and they dont even play in our league.  can remember clueless people saying a simular thing about van persie!! you got laugh

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  9. Leeds will eb back11:15 pm, March 14, 2012

    ROONEY WILL SCORE 25 goals with 15 chances created by others and 10 penalties. Suarez creates all 15 chances and hollywood takes our penalties. I choose luiz over shrek anyday. sAME VAN PERSIE WAS NOBODY and wasn't even considered a striker UNTIL LAST SEASON. They were trying to buy chamakh and create henry outta bendtner.

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  10. watch him go  to man city and light up the blue sky as he does for us in Uruguay...

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  11. Spot On Mate..funny too..

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  12. if King Kenny had any idea of coming out of retirement to play football again..i bet you that he would replace Adam or Henderson anytime..ha..ha..ha..

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  13. Thought Carroll played very well last night and the only thing he lacked was a goal. He was even trying to play through balls, made one great cross field pass and played a nice ball round the corner to play Suarez in. Not sure how determined some of the Everton defending was, but I thought Carroll put in a promising performance. If he can keep that up to the rest of the season, then he might look like he can push on next season. Big 'if' though. Basically, everyone has to stay fit, another big 'if', the remaining league games are nearly all winnable, but so have a lot of our games to this point been. Tottenham are in a slump, but i fear that Arsenal and, now, Chelsea, are starting to pick up and we can't catch them. If anything, I reckon we've more chance of catching Spurs now, they must be starting to worry they will miss out. That win for Chelsea this evening will give them a huge boost.

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  14. Suarez is a player with tremendous ability, but he isn't a classic centre forward in the mould of Torres, Drogba, van Persie, Higuain, Gomez, Cavani, Llorente, Ibrahimovic, .... instead he is much rather a wide forward, who is able to play as such, but can't match the finishing ability or the presence in the box the examples show mentioned above.

    He also likes to be involved in build-up play, creating chances, winning free kicks and corners, playing football actively (playing with the ball at his feet) rather than passively (lurking in and around the box, waiting for his chance to put the ball in the back of the net).

    Without a doubt is his best position out wide in a front three, as he has shown in his time at Ajax and in his first four months with us.

    The problem nowadays lies therein that it seems Kenny wants to play a 4-4-2 formation with Carroll and Suarez up front, which could work when we get the wingers we need (pa e, dribbling skills, crossing ability, flair and creativity) with little Luis being the link up player, but at the moment we don't have them and therefore our number 7 and 9 are struggling - Carroll for the non existent service and Suarez for being relied upon to provide creativity, creating goalscoring chances, being a threat and scoring the goals all by himself.

    That's quite ridiculous if you ask me and by no means fair on Luis.

    I would love to see something like this until we get the wingers we need, if we still want to play the 4-4-2;

    -------------------Reina-------------------

    --Johnson---Skrtel--Agger---Enrique--

    ----------Spearing----Henderson--------

    -----Maxi-------Gerrard------Suarez----

    --------------Carroll/Bellamy-------------

    Bench// Doni/Coates/Kelly/Shelvey/Downing/Kuyt/(Carroll/Bellamy)

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  15. Asking Suarez to play wide left in a 4-2-3-1 formation is a tough ask for a player that has never played that role in that formation. Big tactical differences between 4-3-3 and 4-2-3-1, e.g., two covering central midfielders instead of three.

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  16. Suarez is a classic no-10 not a striker, he likes drifting around to find space but so does SG. I thought Carroll, Suarez and SG looked very good against the bitters. The more Carroll plays with them the better he will get, he is improving bit by bit.

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  17. Suarez is not a natural goal scorer but that does not take anything away from him as far as class of playing football is concerned. It is manager's job to identify player's abilities and limitations and put the team together with all needed qualities.

    I think Liverpool badly needs to buy a real goal poacher. Someone like Jackson Martinez or anyone who just stays up front and converts majority of his touches into on target shooting with good conversion rate. Suarez is not that type of player and he will never be. He wants to be a part of play all the time. 

    Goal poachers hardly have a few touches on ball during whole match but they need only 1 or 2 to score one. Torres used to be one of them and we should find someone this summer.

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  18. I think Carroll can never be the player we need in Liverpool. 

    A simple test: If Carroll is running in his top speed, how quickly can he stop and run with the same speed in opposite direction ? There is no drill in the world to improve on that. He does not have it in him. End of story. 

    Take any good striker in the world. Agility and guile are two crucial attributes. Anyone with a little understanding of football can see this. I wonder what Kenny was thinking when he paid £35 million for this stiff player who takes ages to just turn around.

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  19. Chi Bai lu, Souey, you are damn right for once!

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  20. What a load of nonsense

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  21. Plays as the main striker for Uruguay, with Forlan behind him and Cavani on the right. For Ajax, yes, he sometimes plays on the left of a 4-3-3 but he played plenty as the central striker. All this no.10/second-striker stuff, is apologist revisionism.

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  22. No to Berbatov. United wouldn't sell to us anyway. Remember Heinze?

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  23. I am amazed at people who say Suarez is 'not a natural goalscorer'. They heard it from someone like Lawro, and they now keep repeating it as some sort of a mantra.
    What is he then? Are his 150 goals for Ajax in 1,5 seasons a "mere good luck" because the Dutch league are a mickey-mouse league??

    Well, look at them mickey mouse boys batter our youngsters 6-0 last night in the NexGen semi. I believe they were all not natural goals scorers either?

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  24. why bother these are english fools anyway...que no ni no Suarez.

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  25. Yeah right, the 4-2-3-1 is more defensively structured, but only to give the fullbacks the freedom to bomb forward constantly without fearing to leave gaps open ...

    In contrary, the 4-3-3 isn't so strict and allows a lot of different approaches ....

    But for Suarez it would hardly make a difference in his playing role, playing style, whatsoever ...

    Another thing is that our number 7 already played in that position, in his first few month at the end of last season ....

    We played with two defensive midfielders (Lucas&Spearing), one attacking midfielder (Meireles), two wide forwards (Suarez&Maxi) and one striker/poacher (Kuyt) and at that time we played the best football under Kenny yet.

    Nice try, but you failed here, sorry.

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  26. It would make a tactical difference, as he would have to track back more. He would have less central midfield cover if he wasn't to track back and would also impact on how stretched our central midfield gets if they have to cover a lot on the wing, which ends up in holes for the opposition to run at. Making him track back like he is some winger, rather than a forward, is restricting what he is about. If you can't see that, that simply illustrates a lack of simple understanding of tactical differences between formations. Not hard to grasp but for some odd reason, you fail to see it. Even some football manager geek would see it. 
    Last season, he didn't play that much in that role in that formation of yours. He played further forward. Silly revisionism on your behalf there.Anyhoo, Its about getting the best of your best players, especially in a average team like ours,  so to do what you want is to restrict his ability, which is just stupid.I would say nice try too but it wasn't. See, two can play 'arrogant smart-arse' game. It might be natural to you, the arrogant nature but not to me, so I'll leave my interaction with you on this point at an end.

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