So I want to talk about Emre Can.
In Defence of Emre Can
Okay so I want to address an issue that has been kicking around the Liverpool fanbase for a while, which is Emre Can. This is, in my opinion, a multi-faceted issue that needs to be addressed in a number of ways, as lately the situation has become very heated. Okay so first off, a few just general bits. First of all, I'm not using this as an excuse to slag off Wijnaldum. I am going to talk about Wijnaldum of course, in direct comparison to Can, but only because Wijnaldum is the player that Can is competing with for a place in the side, and because he is, in my opinion, amongst the players who is getting a free pass from Liverpool fans.
Okay and the obvious elephant in the room. I'm going to be slightly harsh on some Liverpool fans. So clearly there's some distinctions and qualifications I should make beforehand. If you've not liked Can from the beginning, that's fine. If you don't think he's good enough for LFC, fine. If you like Can, but think he's underperforming at the moment then okay. I don't agree with all of these people but as long as there's a consistent runline, we're all entitled to our opinions. But I do have a few issues with some of the utter nonsense that has come out of our fanbase R.E Emre Can.
Football fans are a fickle lot. Emre Can was a critical player for Liverpool last season, and his return from injury to face Villareal in the second leg of the Europa League semi-final last year was being heralded much as the return of Matip, Henderson or Coutinho has been over the last few weeks. Can of course, was phenomenal that day, turning in the kind of complete performance that Liverpool fans had seen from him last season. Then in the summer of 2016, Can was being unfairly compared to Jordan Henderson, much as he is now. Only the other way round. "Why is Henderson captain, demote him and give Emre the armband", was a common phrase to be used. Can was really seen as the future in the defensive midfield position.
Things changed drastically however. Can suffered injury setbacks following his Euros campaign with Germany, and during his battle to get fit, Gini Wijnaldum and Adam Lallana has established themselves as central midfielders in Klopp's new 4-3-3 system, which I'll come to in a minute. It wasn't until Liverpool's 0-0 draw with Man United that Can got into the side, as Lallana picked up an injury against Swansea. Can then played the next five games for Liverpool and was extremely impressive against Watford and Palace in particular, scoring in back to back games as Liverpool hit the top of the table with some of their best team performances.
Can turned in another good performance against Bournemouth, scoring and grabbing an assist despite the match going against LFC. But unfortunately he also picked up a niggle that kept him out of the starting line up for the games against Boro, Everton and Stoke.
This is where the trouble started, as Can returned for the game against Man City and turned in a solid performance. But with Jordan Henderson missing from the starting line up against Sunderland, Can shifted from the box to box position that he'd been inhabiting to a flat defensive midfielder in the 4-3-3, and struggled. To say that he was awful would definitely be overstating it but he lacked the control and tenacity of Henderson in that position. He then played in the 0-0 against Plymouth where I personally thought he was decent enough and then in the 1-0 defeat to Saints. At this point, with three poor Liverpool performances on the trot and Can at the heart of all of them, the fans started getting on Can's back.
Then came the trip to Old Trafford, where Can was the best player on the pitch by a country mile, outshining Paul Pogba and creating the most chances, as well as making the most tackles. Fans backed off Can, for about one game, as he was then once again scapegoated for the 3-2 defeat to Swansea.
And then you throw into the mix rumours that Juventus are interested, and then it comes out that contract talks with Emre have stalled because he allegedly wants more money than the club are offering. Suddenly, Emre is terrible, shouldn't be playing for Liverpool and we should be selling him in the summer. This for me is where I got really annoyed.
Okay so a few things I want to address. Can's form, the system that Klopp deploys, the Juve rumours and the contract talks. So, digging right into the form issue. Funnily enough, the way that I've described the situation thus far should tell you my opinion on Can's form. Yes, I'm biased in favour of Can, but the way I see it, he has had at most four disastrous performances in the last five games, along with one man of the match performance. Now, in my opinion none of his performances in the last five games have been terrible. He was very much below par against Sunderland, but so was everyone. Plymouth? Frankly I thought he was our best player but again, everyone was bad. Southampton? Same again: Can wasn't great but then I couldn't name you a player who was. And finally against Swansea? Can was anonymous, but given that our entire back four was garbage and Wijnaldum was partially at fault for two of the goals, I'm willing to suggest that maybe he's not the problem we should be focusing on?
I've already used the word scapegoat, and oh my god is it relevant. Now to be clear, not every fan who complains about Can's form is scapegoating him, that's simply not true. And I freely admit that the United game aside, Can has not performed particularly well since his return to the side through injury, although I'll staunchly defend that he's not been significantly worse than anyone else. But when the team is playing badly, and make no mistake Liverpool have been playing very badly, and people around you are talking about Emre Can, then it makes total sense that you'd weigh in with: actually yeah Can has been terrible today. So a combination of group mentality and not wanting to stick the knife into players who have played well previously this season (coming to Lallana in a minute) means that Can is one of the players who gets a bit of a hammering.
Another point that has been made frequently is that a midfield trio of Can, Henderson and Wijnaldum simply doesn't contain enough creativity or quality attacking play, and that as a result of that, and forcing Adam Lallana out of position, either out wide or into the number 10 position is a large part of the problem. Now, on the one hand, I completely agree with this point, and I do agree that the logical solution is to drop Can, given that the midfield trio of Hendo, Gini and Lallana has worked brilliantly this season. But on the other: two points. Firstly, I'm not okay with giving Lallana a free pass. I'm sorry, I'm not. He's been brilliant this season but saying that because he's playing out wide, or in the 10 position, where he has spent the majority of his career playing and playing well, means that he has an excuse for being decidedly mediocre over the last five games is not right for me.
Here's the other point: what has Wijnaldum done to justify his place either in the last few weeks? He nabbed an assist against Swansea, but he was also defensively shoddy in that game. A lot of people say that Liverpool played their best football with Gini playing this season but I don't think that that's straightforwardly true, given that subbing in Can for Wijnaldum in the autumn did very well to dent Liverpool's sensational winning run.
Okay so moving on to talk a bit more about the 4-3-3 itself and the issues that I think it presents. First of all, I don't think that the three is straightforwardly symmetrical. Similar to the United style of 4-3-3, you tend to have one deep lying midfielder (Hendo), then two playing in advance of him. But even in this two, one of those is more attacking than the other. When Lallana plays in the midfield, he is the man that is the most attacking, and both Wijnaldum and Can are used to playing the support role, keep the ball ticking, try and get in the box etc. The problem comes when both of those players try to play their natural game, and neither of them plays the Lallana role.
Now in my opinion, the emphasis should be on Wijnaldum to contribute more in an attacking sense, in terms of goals and assists, then it should be for Can to do so. Given that their underlying passing stats across the last four or five games (and all season) have been very similar, both players are capable of playing that role. But Wijnaldum is a more naturally attack-minded player, who scored 10 goals last season for Newcastle and has been used predominantly as an attack-midfield. Can on the other hand, has been used as a DM, in the double-pivot and even for a while at center back for Liverpool. So which of these two players should the attacking emphasis be on? To compare to United's 4-3-3 again, which player is Herrera and which is Pogba? Asking Can to be Adam Lallana is in my opinion unfair, but it is essentially the role that Wijnaldum was signed to play.
Now moving on to talk about Can's role in the system. It's for me at least, been clear for a lot of Can's Liverpool career that he is a solid defensive midfielder but that his best position is as a box-to-box player. He thrived in Liverpool's 4-2-3-1 formation alongside Henderson, because both players are terrific in the double pivot. When one pushes on, the other drops in and covers them. Henderson and Can have an excellent working relationship playing in the 2, and more often, that meant that Hendo pushed on and Can dropped deeper, as Hendo has a better and more dangerous passing range.
Now the current 4-3-3 is very different to the 4-2-3-1, as the high transition rate and high pressing mdifielders mean that playing in this system, it's not Can's job to defend from defensive midfield, but from the front. This is something that Wijnaldum and Lallana have no problem with, they are essentially absolved of defensive responsibility. Neither of them are really defensive players and they both offer little in a defensive capacity to this team, preferring to defend on the front foot. Can, meanwhile, used to playing in a two with Hendo, often drops deeper to cover his partner and certainly does more defensive work than Lallana and Wijnaldum. What this means is that when Can plays, the 4-3-3 shifts slightly to be more of a double pivot at times, given that that's Can's more natural game alongside Henderson. This puts more pressure on Wijnaldum to do more attacking work, which at the moment, he simply isn't doing. On the other side of the coin, when playing in the CDM role without Henderson against Sunderland, Can received a lot less cover from Wijnaldum and Lallana, and wasn't equipped to handle the lone DM role, a position that took Henderson a few games to adapt too as well, as he struggled with the intensity against Arsenal and Burnley, even if his performances since have been stellar.
To cut a long story short on this section, I think that the 4-3-3 is a formation that suits some players more than others, Lallana being a good example of someone thriving in their new role, but Can's best position is alongside Hendo in a double pivot and the nuances of that are clear to see in this system. To me at least it's clear that Liverpool's best midfield three consists of Henderson and Lallana, but it's not obvious that Wijnaldum ahead of Can is as clear cut as people make it out to be, and in my opinion we look more balanced with Can playing there ahead of Wijnaldum.
So moving on to talk about the behind the scenes issues, with Juventus apparently interested and Can allegedly refusing to sign a new deal. First of all, if Can does go to Juventus then I wish him the best of luck as that would be a seriously good move for the player. Juve are a top club and I'd love to see him dominate one of the best midfields in Europe. However, I'd be devastated to see him go. Can is clearly a top player with bags of talent and if his form isn't quite at 100% at the moment then that doesn't mean we should get rid of him. He's a top central midfielder and frankly, I'd be doing everything I could to keep him.
Okay, so the contract talks. Here's my issue. The natural assumption with these kinds of deals, especially when a player is in a bad patch of form, is to assume that because there is a problem with the deal that it's the player who is at fault. The idea that a player who isn't playing particularly well is asking for more money earns comments like: he doesn't deserve more money, he's not playing well.
The reality of the situation of this. Can's going to be signing a deal that would tie him down to potentially five more years at Liverpool, going into the prime of his career, meaning that this is the deal that most likely will be as much as he's going to get for the foreseeable future. So his wages have to represent what his role is going to be at Liverpool over the next five years. Around him, Wijnaldum is earning 90k a week, Hendo 100k and Lallana will probably be earning more than both once his new contract is nailed down. Klopp obviously sees Can as a key player in his squad, hence why he's given him such a big role in recent weeks, so it would not be unfair for Can, at his age with his talent to be expecting to be earning as much as Gini or Hendo, so 100k is not unreasonable.
The problem is that we don't know how much Liverpool offered him. Liverpool are the ones who made an offer to Can, and it could be anywhere between 55k and 100k. Personally, I think it's likely that it was somewhere in the 75k/80k range, but the truth is that unless we know what LFC offered, we don't know whether Emre was getting a good deal or not, so it's unfair to automatically paint him as the problem for wanting more money than what LFC were offering. It's especially a problem as this news has come out in the middle of a sticky patch for the team and Emre, so it doesn't reflect well on him personally.
Overall my point is this: Liverpool should not be selling Emre Can. Emre Can is not a terrible player, nor is he ill-suited for Klopp's team. He doesn't as some people have said, give the ball away too often (dispossessed 0.8 times per game compared to 1.5 for Gini and 1.7 for Lallana) or take too many bad touches (1 per game compared to 1.3 for Lallana and 1.5 for Gini). So in defence of Emre Can, I hope I've offered some reasonable arguments, and if we could all get off his back then that would be great.
Okay, confession time. Very nervous about this one and not overly confident. Liverpool are in very bad form, and Chelsea are flying at the moment, shrugging off their setback against Spurs as if it never happened. This is going to be a tight, tactical game and both sides will aim to control the midfield and hit hard with quick transitions. If Liverpool were at their best then I would back them to win this game, because they've showed before that their game is well suited to unsettling Chelsea, similar to how Spurs have unsettled both Chelsea and City this season. But Liverpool will probably not be at their best, which will give Chelsea a window. It all depends how Mane plays off the bench. Personally, I think this one is too close to call. 
