The Mixer: The Story of Premier League Tactics, from Route One to False Nines

Fowler, Owen’s forerunner at Liverpool, complained that he never played alongside a creative forward and speaks of his disappointment that Liverpool didn’t push for the signing of Sheringham in the late 1990s or offer Ajax’s Jari Litmanen better terms at that stage, which meant that the wonderful Finnish forward joined Barcelona instead, despite growing up as a Liverpool fan. The Finn eventually joined Liverpool in 2001. ‘Jari was the type of player we’d been crying out for, slotting in behind a more advanced striker,’ said Liverpool defender Jamie Carragher. ‘All the greatest sides have such players. United began to win titles when they bought Eric Cantona, Arsenal had Dennis Bergkamp. Every summer I hoped Liverpool were going to be in the market for a similar forward.’ By this stage, however, injury problems meant Litmanen wasn’t able replicate their impact. Had he joined Liverpool four years earlier, things might have been very different.

Owen’s best relationship was with Steven Gerrard, who was capable of playing pinpoint through-balls. Owen’s last goal for Liverpool, in a 1–1 draw against Newcastle on the final day of 2003/04, was assisted by a brilliant curled Gerrard pass, acknowledged immediately by Owen in his celebration. But at this point Gerrard played relatively deep in midfield and was unable to form a direct partnership with Owen, and wouldn’t be pushed up the pitch behind the striker for a couple of years. If Owen had stuck around at Liverpool or had Gerrard moved forward earlier, they might have formed the perfect combination. Owen briefly linked effectively with Wayne Rooney for England, albeit in the days when Rooney’s directness made him the greater goal threat.

But Owen’s most intriguing strike partner for Liverpool was the forward you would least expect – Anelka. Although the two emerged simultaneously and seemingly played the same role, Anelka’s aforementioned dislike of playing up front meant that he was happier in a withdrawn position during a brief, half-season loan spell with Liverpool in 2001/02. ‘I played my best football at Liverpool, because I played in my best position there,’ said Anelka. ‘Owen was the main scorer and you knew he was going to score no matter what. He allowed me to play my best.’

Owen remembers Anelka fondly, too. ‘He didn’t score a lot of goals for us … but you could see he was a class act with great ability; in training he showed that he had a lovely touch, he could drop deep and link play, and had pace as well.’ Anelka would be particularly delighted that Owen mentioned his link play before his pace. The Frenchman wasn’t signed permanently, however, and Gérard Houllier replaced him with El-Hadji Diouf, a player with all Anelka’s bad habits and few of his qualities. You could say the same about Owen’s replacement at Liverpool in 2004, Djibril Cissé, who was the purest speedster of all.

By the time he moved to Real Madrid, Owen had already peaked. He spent much of his career on the sidelines, with fitness problems dating back to a serious hamstring injury sustained in April 1999 at just 19 – typically, when sprinting in behind the Leeds defence onto a through-ball. He returned too quickly, partly through Houllier’s insistence, against the wishes of Liverpool physio Mark Leather. When Owen announced his retirement in 2013, his statement felt particularly sad. ‘An emotion that lives with me is a sense of “what might have been” had injuries not robbed me of my most lethal weapon – speed. Many of my highlights were early on in my career and I can only wonder what more I would have achieved had my body been able to withstand the demands that I was making of it. I was almost too quick. My hamstring gave way at Leeds at the age of 19 and from that moment on my career as a professional footballer was compromised … I have no doubt that, had I not suffered those “pace-depriving” injuries, I would be sat here now with a sack full of awards and a long list of records.’

Later, Owen adjusted to his diminished mobility by playing a withdrawn role, and impressed during a spell behind Mark Viduka and Obafemi Martins for Newcastle in 2007/08, managed by the returning Keegan – who, as we know, was never afraid to play forwards in deeper roles. Owen was always unable to replicate those early heights, however. Upon leaving Newcastle on a free transfer his management company sent a 34-page brochure outlining Owen’s virtues to potentially interested clubs, using statistics to deny he was injury-prone and dedicating a section to debunk tabloid myths. Who knows whether the brochure helped, but he eventually earned a move to champions Manchester United, replacing Cristiano Ronaldo in the famous number 7 shirt. He finally won a league title in 2010/11, although he described the feeling as ‘a bit hollow’ because of his minimal contribution. He subsequently spent a single season at Stoke City, where he didn’t start or win a league game all season, scoring just once, a 91st-minute headed consolation in a 3–1 defeat at Swansea. It’s tough to imagine a less fitting final goal.

It wasn’t simply that Owen was now slower, it was that opponents – particularly smaller teams fighting relegation – defended deep. During the 1990s defences were accustomed to pushing up to keep aerially dominant strikers away from the box. Increasingly, strikers’ key weapon was pace, and at the start of the century it wasn’t unusual to see top teams playing two speedsters up front: Henry alongside Sylvain Wiltord at Arsenal, Owen alongside Diouf at Liverpool. That would have been very unusual earlier, when aerial power was key, or later, when defenders retreated towards their own goal. The defenders who continued to play in a high defensive line, meanwhile, became increasingly fast, which was disastrous for Owen. ‘Speed is the key to my battles with the game’s best defenders,’ he said. ‘The tough ones were the quick ones. Size doesn’t bother me, because my main weapon is pace, it’s the fast ones who negate some of my natural swiftness.’

But defenders had become faster precisely because of players like Owen, as Arsène Wenger outlined much later. ‘Football always progresses. The attack creates a new problem, the defence responds. What has happened in the last ten years is that the strikers have become quicker and quicker. What’s happened? The defence have responded by creating quicker and quicker defenders.’ In that respect, Owen was another victim of his own success.

Part Three

Expansion

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