Can Richard and Danny finally make a case for the defence?
Last updated 09:31, Saturday, 11 October 2008
THE comparison comes to me at last: Danny Livesey and Richard Keogh are Carlisle’s Frank Lampard and Steven Gerrard a few yards further back, and now it drops to John Ward to challenge the widespread view that United’s two centre-halves are talented but incompatible.
A few miles south of Milton Keynes today, England’s gifted midfield enigmas will have another stab at convincing the country they can operate in tandem without Fabio Capello’s team succumbing to friction.
In the city of concrete cows, meanwhile, Livesey and Keogh will pair up for the fifth occasion in the United defence this season and attempt to stop a team rippling the Cumbrian net twice for the first time in that gloomy spell.
The argument that Ward’s two preferred centre-halves cannot function together because they are too similar in style has hardly been discredited by recent events: namely, the tossing of goals into Ben Williams’ goal with alarming carelessness.
Leeds, Walsall, Tranmere and Rochdale have put two past United in successive games this term when Livesey and Keogh have formed the central pair at the back.
Add to this last season’s results when the twin towers lined up together, and the unpromising tally is 19 goals conceded from 11 outings.
This isn’t, it should be said, a lazy jabbing of the finger at the two men just to make a point. Several of those goals have emerged from other players’ mistakes (Evan Horwood’s awful backpass on Tuesday which triggered Rochdale’s second goal, for example, had little to do with the centre-halves).
And wouldn’t you know it, United still shipped plenty when Livesey and Peter Murphy linked to make the central unit that generally gets the most terrace votes (12 goals in eight games this season, although four of those were claimed by the gold-plated foreign strikeforce of QPR in the Carling Cup).
So it’s more complicated than simply rearranging the bodies. But sometimes the naked eye needs to be trusted, and it tells us that the Livesey-Keogh axis still doesn’t look as comfortable as it should.
Let’s first deal with the loose notion that neither man is as good as we’ve been encouraged to believe. Livesey, quite correctly, was anointed one of League One’s best centre-halves in last season’s PFA vote. That says enough about his attributes.
And anyone tempted to describe Keogh as a slightly more cumbersome version of the same player needs to speak to fans of Cheltenham, where the Eire Under-21 international laced together several outstanding performances last season to help deliver the Whaddon Road minnows from the threat of League One relegation.
That doesn’t mean their similarities aren’t to blame for the current quandary, however. Try this for a poser: Would a manager readily employ two carbon copies together in other central positions of the field? Does Ward dive into the transfer market for a Paul Thirlwell clone in order to pair him with his battling captain in midfield? Does he seek out another poaching line-leader to operate alongside Danny Graham?
No. He looks for differences, for partnerships that dovetail, for pairs of players who complement each other the way Murphy and Livesey appear to in defence, with the Dubliner’s composure and floor-football inclination, and Livesey’s old-fashioned warrior instinct.
Livesey resumes the captaincy in Thirlwell’s absence at MK Dons today, and the effect on both player and team will be fascinating to observe. It’s my belief that the former Bolton player was not a natural leader when he was recruited by Paul Simpson as a 19-year-old in 2004, but developed into one after nearly three years learning at Kevin Gray’s knee in the Carlisle defence. The awarding of the armband last season, with the masterful Gray by now off the scene, enhanced him.
Yet at no point in his Carlisle spell has Keogh resembled anything other than a leader himself: a defender whose nature is to command the back four with chest-out, wholehearted authority. It’s hard to see him having ever been a follower, one who readily alters his style and direction at a captain’s first bark.
The problem seems to be this: if the pairing is to work, then one man needs to fall back a little, to remove himself from the psychological front line, to stop playing so relentlessly to his strengths. To let the other lead. The fact that sophisticated international players like Gerrard and Lampard still can’t master the you-stay-I-go problem specific to the midfield area suggests this kind of thing is much easier said than done.
Every time I’ve pressed Livesey and Keogh on this issue this season they have spoken respectfully about each other, insisted their partnership can work and reminded us, fairly, that United’s goals-against column is the responsibility of nine other people on the pitch as well. Ask Ward and he makes precisely the same point.
But that doesn’t make it wrong to aim the torch on this particular part of the manager’s flagging team. Either the Livesey-Keogh disharmony is an optical illusion which an upturn in fortune will quickly address, or two fine players are being diminished in front of our eyes. Until we get some clarity, we’re left with the troubling suspicion than both men deserve better.
