He began his career at Tottenham, and didn’t start a single game for the club. Queen’s Park Rangers snapped him up from the youth system and in a season of 38 games, Crouch bagged an impressive 10 goals, showing some potential at the meek and defining football age of 20. He was thinner even then than he is now, and would not have survived in the Premiership against big defenders with both strength and height, such as Chelsea’s then-centre-back Marcel Desailly. He was developing, still just a lad, mainly used as a ‘target’ for an under-pressure defence when it needed to boot the ball rapidly up field and for someone to make it stay there or flick it on with a head higher than any defender’s head around him. For a certain kind of team, potential to be one of these target men is very valuable.
Hence, cometh 2001 and Peter Crouch was snapped up by Portsmouth. In 37 games he bagged 18 highly important goals, and this success was firmly pounced upon by David O Leary at Aston Villa, snapping him up in March 2002. At this point came the stall in Peter Crouch’s career. Perhaps he made the step up too early; many strikers of a young age develop late, and need experience in lower divisions before shooting into the highly competitive and, in various ways, scary world of the Premiership. Perhaps he suffered a lack of confidence, didn’t make friends at Villa, or was disliked by the management; whatever it was, Peter’s Prospects shot south with an embarrassing 2 goals in a total of 26 appearances from 2002 to 2003. In an extra 16 performances, only 4 more goals were put away by his wayward boots, and Peter Crouch became a forgotten fellow, natured into accepting the reserves as his new home.
This whistle-stop tour of Crouch’s career has so far made steady progress upwards, and involved a transfer to Aston Villa, followed by a downturn of potentially catastrophic proportions; many young players get a chance at a Premier League club, don’t take it full on with both hands, and are then cast out for the rest of their careers, told they are simply not of the calibre high enough for the top English division. One example of a young lad who did take his chance full on was our very own Michael Owen: he scored on his debut substitute appearance at Wimbledon, then again in his very next match, quickly on his way to becoming a Kop Legend, yet never fully realizing that dream after a quickfire move to Real Madrid.
He betrayed Liverpool, and paid the consequences. Owen watched Liverpool from the bench in Spain as they won the European Cup without him, and surely felt sorry for himself as it dawned on him that a mistake had been made in that move abroad. That is how Owen’s attitude is – he cares about numero uno and not the club he’s at, because if that wasn’t true then he would never have left the club that raised him and he wouldn’t constantly moan about not playing enough at Real Madrid, hence leaving the coach perplexed and English clubs on red alert in preparation for his imminent return to his homeland.
I hope we don’t buy him again. As bold as that statement is, I can’t help but feel that we would be signing back a man who betrayed the club, and would certainly be willing to do it again. Imagine, God forbid, that Liverpool paid 12-18 million pounds for the boy and then the club began to fall behind again, finishing fourth, fifth, fourth. Michael Owen would not hesitate to flirt with Manchester United, Chelsea, and Arsenal. He is not a Liverpool boy, even though we all believed him to be.
But Peter Crouch may yet be a true fighter of the Kop cause.
Rafael Benitez, after all, is the key man in all of this. He doesn’t like an attitude problem, and that’s why he so willingly offloaded our number 10 as practically his first action as boss last year. He doesn’t buy players who sulk; just look at Xabi Alonso, Luis Garcia, Fernando Morientes, Mohammed Sissoko, and Bolo Zenden. All of them are seemingly studious in their work, get their heads down, and just play the game that they love. That isn’t the money game, that is the game of football. For Liverpool. None of them moan, or offer themselves to bigger clubs. Zenden happily went from Chelsea to ‘Boro in order to play more, Xabi offers Rafa long tactical evaluations of games, Garcia is so full of effort that his every move is full of passion. Rafa buys smart, not big. Michael Owen would cost more than Peter Crouch, he would offer us a very similar option to that given by Djibril Cisse, and would not be truly committed to his club. Peter Crouch is a fighter, will cost no more than 7.5 million pounds and will offer us a real ‘other’ option.
Knock out that turgid time at Aston Villa, and Crouch is a man on the up again. He scored 16 goals in around 30 games last season for Southampton and showed devotion to the cause of keeping that club up. 16 is a higher return than Milan Baros, who played many more games than Peter Crouch is a vastly improved side at Liverpool. Southampton, indeed, only went down because the men around Peter Crouch were poor in comparison, and were not of Premiership steel. He, however, showed his immense spirit for the club that he plays for, and scored a great number of goals in a team so weak. This man has a total of 64 goals in 6 seasons, two years of which were spent in limbo at Aston Villa. And yet, never has Peter Crouch played in a good, quality team.
Who knows what awaits him and us if he is given a chance by Rafael Benitez? A good work ethic, attitude, and goalscoring record places him high on our list of wanted targets. A list which, might I add, Michael Owen appears to have been omitted from. Rafael still has time to mould Crouch at his relatively young age into a player suited to his desired system. Peter Crouch is a man of great prospects, not mistakes He has toiled hard for years to get a big chance. Michael Owen was handed his chance on a plate by Roy Evens, and he snapped it up, the destroyed it all by himself. Michael Owen is a man of mistakes. He’s not the one we need.
Let’s call Southampton and give big Pete a break.