Blogs

Liverpool Loanee Loathed by Championship Opposition

|

Last year it was Dani Pacheco that graced The Championship from Liverpool. Joining Norwich City in the emergency loan window of March 2011, the young Spaniard featured in six of The Canaries few remaining games in their surge towards The Premier League. He found the back of the net in a third of the games he played and went back to Liverpool with some vital English match experience and two goals to his name. Brad Jones also took The Championship, but the Aussie goalkeeper had a spell that was less than worthy of writing home about.

This year Liverpool have again sent out two players to The Championship to gain much-valued game experience in “the most competitive league in the world”; this year another ‘keeper has been shipped out on loan, Hungarian Peter Gulacsi, but the player that is most likely to return to Anfield with a much-deserved, and reinstated, reputation is Jonjo Shelvey.

Plucked from the promising Charlton team of 2010, Jonjo Shelvey was still only 18 and Liverpool scrapped with other Premier League teams to sign the youngster. A fee just shy of £2m was enough to secure the 6 foot midfielder, who had previously played through the youth ranks at Arsenal and the self-proclaimed “Academy of England” West Ham United.

Having been at Liverpool for a full season, making 21 appearances for the scousers in total, Shelvey was signed on a season-long loan by relegated Premier League first-timers Blackpool.

The Seasiders have pulled off something of a coup securing a midfielder from Liverpool; Shelvey was regularly part of the action last season, coming off the bench to feature for the first team fifteen times in The Premier League, but furthermore, Shelvey comes from a midfield department that boasts Gerrard, Downing, and Henderson and neatly tied up by Lucas Levia.

Gerrard’s talents need no description, the one-club man, ever-present in the Liverpool set-up has captained club and country at various times throughout his career and has often been the fuel for criticism of Liverpool, some stating they become a one-man team when Gerrard’s about.

Downing, over the past five years is fifth in the most chances created table put together by Opta, Europe’s largest provider of football data. “Most chances created” defines, by Opta, as “assists + key passes” and last season Stewart Downing made 65 chances, coming in at third, only behind Barton (2nd) and Malouda (1st), with an average of 1.71 chances created per game. Over the past five years Stewart Downing has only created fewer chances than; fellow Liverpool player, Gerrard, retired Paul Scholes, another Manchester United midfielder, Ryan Giggs, English midfielder Frank Lampard and the since departed Spaniard and World Cup champion medallist Cesc Fabregas. It was the stat that most enticed Liverpool to sign the former Middlesbrough academy graduate, along with England u21 midfielder Jordan Henderson who racked up 49 chances created last season.

However it is Steven Gerrard that Jonjo Shelvey is most in the mould of; Shelvey states that, “he is the best central midfielder of all time, I think, he’s the benchmark for young midfielders – he is for me,” and the comparisons have come already. Shelvey is a goal-scoring midfielder and has been since a young age; aged just 15, Shelvey scored 14 goals in 23 appearances including scoring in every round of The FA Youth Cup until Charlton were knocked out in the quarter-final. His season’s form also saw him captain the England u16 side and he scored in all three games of that year’s Victory Shield, a tournament for the u16 sides of the Home Nations.

Click HERE to head to PAGE TWO…

Share this article

Budding Football journalist who blogs at www.maycauseoffence.com/ daily as well as writing here for ThisisFutbol and on www.onehellofabeating.com/ the England fan's page. Outside of writing is more football. I work at Southampton F.C and I manage a men's football team on Saturdays.

0 comments

  • MIKE says:

    He is without doubt a very good player in the Championship and a brilliant loan signing for Blackpool. With him in their side i can see Blackpool having a good season if they can stop letting in goals at the other end!

Comments are closed.