It’s the 26th August, 2012. Midway through the first half of Brendan Rodgers’ first competitive home game as manager, Liverpool score their first league goal of the season. The scorer wheels away in delight as The Kop erupts, a rare goal to his name. Things have never looked so good for Martin Skrtel.
Fast forward to the present day, and the Slovakian international’s career has dramatically turned on its head. The 2011/12 player of the year has fallen out of favour with the Liverpool management, with talks of a possible sale to Napoli gathering pace over the summer. There is a general feeling that he would have been surplus to requirements had a suitable replacement been signed earlier in the window, with linked players including Dejan Lovren and Kyriakos Papadopoulos. However, with it looking increasingly likely he will stay, Liverpool fans will be wondering where it went wrong for Martin Skrtel and whether or not he can reclaim his first team place and recapture the form which saw him become a fans favourite.
The point of no return for many fans came when the defensive ‘hard-man’ was embarrassed each time he came up against a striker with any sort of physical presence, culminating in Oldham’s Matt Smith destroying Skrtel in the 3-2 defeat away at the league one side. That’s right; a Premier League hard-man made to look like…well, like Stewart Downing going into tackles, against a League one side. But moving on…
There was a reason that players such as Christian Benteke, Romelu Lukaku – and any Stoke player – had a field day against Liverpool last season. In Martin Skrtel, Liverpool possess a ‘hard-man’ who is nothing of the sort. This was only highlighted when he backed away from Benteke until the Belgian decided he was close enough to the goal to score, and confirm a 3-1 home defeat for Liverpool. Daniel Agger is a fine centre back, who flourishes when playing alongside a no-nonsense, truly ball winning defender, in the mould of Jamie Carragher, whom he broke through the ranks learning from and looking up to. Martin Skrtel is simply not up to scratch as the starter in this position. He could perhaps be used as back up to a regular starting centre back pairing, of say Agger and Mamadou Sakho, or the aforementioned Papadopoulos. Also, I am by no means implying that Agger’s partner at the back needs to be an absolute monster, who thinks nothing of consistently ploughing in for career threatening challenges. It needs to be a player with some sort of physical presence and isn’t afraid to stand up against imposing strikers. Kolo Toure was a perfect example, as he marshalled Christian Benteke wonderfully well, and didn’t give him an inch. With a starting pair of Agger and Toure, Liverpool have kept clean sheets against both Stoke and Aston Villa, two of the most physically imposing and combative sides in the league.
In Rodgers’ ideal defence with the resources available, Skrtel cannot be the ball winning heavy weight needed to complement Agger, and he is hardly your typical ball playing defender. Although a threat off corners, put the ball at Skrtel’s feet inside the opposition half and he seems to panic, before frantically offloading the ball backwards to the goalkeeper, or failing that, his nearest team-mate; with no thought given to better placed options, or the notion of playing his team-mates into danger. As defenders go, there aren’t many more defenders that are available to us that are more composed on the ball than Agger, therefore there is no place for Skrtel there. This leaves an unhappy Skrtel on the bench, who cannot fit in under Rodgers’ regime. Under Kenny Dalglish the Slovakian could fit in because he simply wasn’t asked to stretch himself particularly, but just to do the simple thing. The vision? Skrtel wins the ball, Charlie Adam spreads the ball wide to Stewart Downing, who crosses the ball in for a certain Geordie striker to get on the end of. Excellent stuff. Except King Kenny is no longer manager, and Skrtel has been asked to adapt, which he unfortunately couldn’t do.
So where does Skrtel fit? With Sebastian Coates injured long term, Skrtel will probably stay as defensive cover for the short term. However, long term, he will only be a hindrance to the careers of Andre Wisdom, Coates himself or even the likes of Martin Kelly and Lloyd Jones. Added to that is what Skrtel’s likely transfer fee would be, with reports of offers circa £10million coming in from Napoli. This money could undoubtedly go some way towards other priorities within the squad, as quality is needed with an upgrade on Skrtel, as well as other areas of the first team crying out for improvement. A January move, or summer 2014 move at the latest, probably lies ahead for the former fans player of the year.
