Jake.
It’s funny reading the media take on ‘Arry Redknapp’s declaration of his love for Jake Livermore. It’s all talk about the amount of games Livermore played last season under Redknapp, while he’s been frozen out and left to rot under the evil Andre Villas-Boas.
Except of course things are slightly different than that. When they talk of games played they don’t mention ‘Arry only played Livermore when he was showing his disdain for a competition – Europa League – or he had no other option – when Scott Parker was injured.
Where if you read the ‘Arry loving media reports you’d think he brought through the player with love and admiration when in the real world much like Sandro Livermore was second choice for ‘Arry, Scott Parker was undroppable, and much like the big Brazilian the English youngster showed up the limitations of Parker when he got the chance.
The worshipping of Parker and his haircut still baffles me. He struck lucky when he came into the side after the poor start to last season. His arrival coincided with that of Adebayor and the return of Ledley at the back and Modric from his moping. Adebayor started scoring, Modric crafting and Ledley defending and the team was completely different from that in the first two stuffings against the Manchester clubs. Yet Parker was credited with the turnaround, when he had least to do with it.
But the worshipping ballooned fuelled by much talk of the passing stats. All of which sounded somewhat similar to the Liverpool manager Brendan Rodgers and his we won the passing
spiel.
There was no real analysis of those stats. No looking at how many of those completed passes were straight back to the player who had passed to Parker. No looking at how many of those straight back passes were to players who had a man or men on and that’s why they passed it away in the first place. Passes that were of no use to Spurs, in fact detrimental. Just had to look at the number of times that Modric had two options on, one the easy choice to pass to Parker the second to try something difficult faced by a number of opponents. He would take the latter, probably knowing if he took the easy option he would be faced with the same situation straight away.
And how many of those successfully completed passes were back passes in the last few minutes as Spurs desperately required a goal. How many of those unsuccessful passes were forward balls that butchered good attacks.
Ah but Parker was there to protect, shield the back four, make tackles and blocks. Yet no analysis of the number of times those that scored against Spurs had just wandered past Parker or were right next to a static Parker when they scored. The number was ridiculous.
Those stats hawks worshipped the padded out passing percentage yet never looked at him being out stat’d by Livermore and Sandro in tackling. What was that game Sandro had twice the number of tackles Parker managed in any game in one half while Spurs had all the possession. Then the pirouettes. Modric, last season, Dembele this can turn with the ball, gain an immediate space from their defender and set off, whereas Parker tries it and plays everyone into trouble.
No Livermore is not a great player but he’s good enough for a backup role to Sandro if he plays like he did on one of his first real opportunities under ‘Arry last season, starting against Everton when Parker was unavailable a game which he ran in a way Parker never has for Spurs.
At 23 Livermore can get better, under better tutelage of coaches with some actual tactical nous in AVB and Steffen Freund who surly can teach him the job. What will he learn with just fuckin’ run around a bit
‘Arry?
‘Arry doesn’t really want Livermore he wants Parker and for any transfer fee it would be the better deal for Spurs as well.