Did you know Kuyt began his professional football career as a winger, and he only started to play as a striker and attacking midfielder in the 2002/03 season? This means that out of a 184 games he played for FC Utrecht, he played the majority of the time as a winger. He netted 66 goals for FC Utrecht, 43 goals he scored when he was not playing as a striker.
Only the last season at Utrecht he started playing as a striker, netting 23 goals in all competitions and earning a 1 million Euros move to Feyenoord. At Feyenoord he rapidly became a fans favourite by scoring 83 goals in 122 starts for the biggest club in Holland.
He also became famous for his fitness. Most football fans can't recall they have ever seen Kuyt injured or limping off during a game (In 2006 he sustained an ankle injury while he was on duty for Holland).
More amazingly between March 2001 and April 2006 Dirk Kuyt played in 179 consecutive matches. He missed only 5 out of a possible 238 matches between 1999-2006.
Upon his move to Liverpool he stated "I only want to leave Feyenoord for a big club, and that is what Liverpool are". His first start was against West Ham Utd when he came on as a substitute and his first goal followed two weeks later when he scored against Newcastle Utd at Anfield.
In his first season Kuyt got a lot of praise, coming from fans and newspapers, not only for his goal scoring but also the fact that he walks to every corner of the ground and applauds the fans after every game, and he does his best for the full 90+ minutes. After his first season the questions came... Is he prolific enough? Does he score enough goals? The simplest answer is no.
But there is more to it - the fact that, according to some fans, he is played out of position. We can argue about that all day, but it is a fact he does turn up every week, he works his socks off, tracks back, he tries to support other players and never gives up. Fernando Torres said in an interview that Kuyt was very important for a majority of the goals he scored last season.
Also you can't deny that in Europe Kuyt is an important player, scoring vital goals against Inter Milan, Arsenal ,Chelsea and let's not forget he earned Liverpool 12 million Euros by scoring the only goal against a very tough Standard Liege.
Although his record for Liverpool is far from impressive (26 goals in 101 starts), I can see why Rafa continues to play him every week, In a certain way you can compare him to Jamie Carragher, who has the same kind of never say die attitude.
Every club has their moment players, the top stars who can decide a game out of nothing, we have Torres and Gerrard, Arsenal have Fabregas, van Persie and Adebayor, Chelsea have Drogba, Lampard and Joe Cole and Man Utd have of course Ronaldo.
But let's not forget every club also have a couple of players who are not that glamorous, who are not in the spotlight because they score a lot, but they are very important to the team. Hereby, I mean players like Mascherano and Carragher at Liverpool, O'Shea and Scholes at Man Utd, Carvalho (and last season Makelele) at Chelsea.
So to conclude my story, maybe fans are asking themselves the wrong question. Instead of asking themselves is Kuyt scoring enough, they should ask themselves: "Is Kuyt the match winner we'd expected him to be when we signed him, or is he one of the less glamorous (but oh so important) silent forces behind a winning team?".
Whichever way you look at it, I'm proud to have a player like Dirk Kuyt in my Liverpool team!