Some LFC fans are having a hard time letting go of what they percieve as Steven Gerrard's disloyalty to Liverpool Football Club.
Taking a wider perspective might improve their outlook. Fans cannot avoid feeling the sting when players listen to other offers. It's human. However, it is easy to forget that players are human too, and while they command weekly salaries better than most of us turn in a year, their playing careers tend around 10-12 years for a very successful player like Steven Gerrard.
So, to better establish apples for apples, player salaries need to be amortized over a span more equivalent to a normal person's working life; this could be on the order of 45 years. Now a Steven Gerrard will still make a lot on that basis, but it's not as objectionable in view of the brevity and risk of the career.
Even more, a footballer is an entity of value in a reasonably efficient commercial market; and it is foolish to think a player would do other than negotiate to the fullest extent when each of us would do so in the same circumstance. In fact, a Steven Gerrard must secure his fair market value in order to function at his optimum on the pitch. How could any reasonable person demand otherwise?
The problem here was not even that the player slipped on the banana peal of the negotiating process, or that he wanted to go elsewhere. Gerrard even absolved his agent, Struan Marshall ("Player Rides to His Agent's Defense" | GuardianUNLIMITED), of blame for driving the notion of a transfer through for personal pecuniary gain.
Gerrard was given good reason -- signalled through inactions at the Club -- to feel that his contract was less than the necessary priority. If I had done as much as Gerrard to win that trophy in May, it would have certainly irked me if the parties were not all gathered immediately after the Champions' League Final to get my situation settled, since a Gerrard signing was in all respects a fait accompli. There seems to have been an unfortunate lack of coordination and certainly a lack of communication throughout the Club while key parties took their much needed vacations, leaving room for the player to wonder against the backdrop of the determined Iberi-ization of Liverpool FC.
It simply helps to view this situation from the player's vantage point to put it in perspective so we can go forward without unnecessary and self-sabotaging emotional baggage. Jealousy will always exist; but I, for one, will be rooting for Red -- and for Steven Gerrard -- this term more than ever before.
In-form football writer, Kevin McCarra (The Guardian UK), shines in his piece on Chelsea v Liverpool in the Champions League. (The good version, "Chelsea Turn the Tides of Red Pressure," is in the print edition which has been badly truncated on the Web.)
...and Milan Baros, too, against mighty Wrexham in 4-3 barn-burner.
Scott Carson
(*) Rumoured to be moving to Liverpool, the dark & handsome 32-year old Figo was 2001 FIFA Player of the Year for Barcelona & Portugal. He will do no harm in this experienced and still-hungry side. If Mr. Benitez figures out the English game, they will be thinking foremost about the Premiership Title in 2005-2006.
Kenny Dalglish was the one when I first developed a thurst for football. He was creative and inspired, accomplishing instinctive and surpising moves at speed. It didn't hurt that he had Souness and a brilliant cast.
