Hmmmm. Eighteen years since they won their last title. Michael Owen, Robbie Fowler, Emile Heskey, Milan Baros, Luis Garcia, Peter Crouch, have come and gone. Both Fowler and Owen are in the Premiership top 10 goalscorers list.
Admittedly, Keane brings some serious firepower, getting many goals from deflections and spills. He has a knack of being at the right spot and the right time. But he is also very streaky going through goal scoring droughts, injury prone, and if he has to think too much usually flubs it.
It would be useful when Keano gets streaky that he scores goals that win Liverpool matches which they really need to win rather than proving to be a statistical supplement to Torres. Having Torres last season added +10 goals to their 2006 – 2007 season of 57 goals which actually resulted in them moving down one spot to fourth. Liverpool also drew 13 matches that seriously slowed them down. So a quality striker like Torres is not going to do it by himself.
The other issue will be where does he play in the 4-2-3-1 scheme that Rafa employs? Well, Rafa seems to think that Keane can be quite versatile. “We can play 4-4-2 with Keane and Torres or someone, or 4-2-3-1 and Keane can play on the right or on the left or as a second striker. It won’t be a problem.”
Keano can’t play on the left or right, he plays pretty much straight down the pipe, hanging off the last defender. So it will have to be behind Torres.
Robbie Keane goal compilation >>