jeff_goldblum
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- Joined
- Dec 6, 2011
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One of the most consistently laughable things on here is when people try to claim he isn't technically great, he is as good as Scholes technically, it's only Scholes brain that he can run a game from deep far better.
Whilst I agree that occasionally on here people underrate Gerrard's technical ability, I don't think it was ever on Scholes' level. In terms of running a game I completely agree though. There's no reason that Gerrard shouldn't have been able to dictate play similarly to Scholes based on his technical skills (although not at the same level because IMO he simply couldn't manipulate the ball as well as Scholes), his problem there is predominantly a mental one.
A main point of debate about Gerrard though is concerned with his tendency to attempt (and fail at) the audacious, which is something you can never really say about Scholes. The obvious counterargument to that is to say that Scholes was more likely to play it safe because of his game intelligence of whatever, but in reality Scholes consistently did a lot of the ridiculous things Gerrard gets stick for attempting. The difference is that with Scholes they almost unfailingly came off so we didn't see them as risky. In that sense I think Gerrard's issue is a combination of technical and mental deficiencies - namely that he's never had absolutely top class technical ability like Scholes did, but at the same time he's never really accepted his limitations in that regard. On top of that he also stops short of having quite the vision or creativity Scholes provided which is undoubtedly also a factor.
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