Steven Gerrard initially broke into the senior team at Liverpool as a right-back and then a holding midfield. He spent his best years as a second striker or an attacking midfielder. He was very effective in the role as he spread the ball well, used his great passing range to provide a lot of assists and scored a variety of different kinds of goals.
Now he in the twilight of his career and has gradually dropped from being a box-to-box midfielder to a defensive midfielder.
Like an experienced elder statesmen, he is going about his business quietly and efficiently.
He usually drops in between the centre-halves to receive the ball and start building attacks from the back.
He is more mobile when he plays along Lucas Leiva, in which case he always tries to make passing angles and make life easier for other players. When he is asked by his manager, Brendan Rodgers, to be the main anchor he barely leaves his own half. His movement is primarily targeted to protect his back for and his average defensive contribution statistics are far higher than most midfielders.
He is obviously not the best holding midfielder in the world. His average passing accuracy of 85 per cent is markedly lower than the likes of Xavi Hernandez, of Barcelona, or Andrea Pirlo, of Juventus, who both occupy similar positions.
These experienced holding midfielders average about 90 per cent passing accuracy per game. While he makes more long passes than average from that role, he falls below the accuracy of most of the best anchormen.
He has inevitably lost his athleticism due to age, so he sometimes struggle when opposing midfielders run at him.
There is a genuine attempt in him to bring the best out of his younger team-mates. Liverpool have pacy attackers and when they play a team that uses a high defensive line, these forwards always make runs in behind looking to receive the ball early.
When Gerrard sees runs of Luis Suarez, Daniel Sturridge or Raheem Sterling he always feed them with perfectly timed passes. He also knows that he plays with full-backs who like to go forward, like Glen Johnson, so he frequently switches play to them quickly by making diagonal passes to them while they are still unmarked.
Sometimes it is a just a simple decision like giving Sturridge a chance to score a hat trick in front of the Kop against Everton or trying to take the blame for less experienced team-mates, as he did when Sturridge subsequently missed that penalty.
That ability to make sacrifices for the great the greater good of the team, that strength of character to stand up and be counted in difficult moments, a calm demeanour to be the voice of reason when things seem out of control and, above all, that magnanimity to let others take credit is what makes Gerrard such a key figure in the Reds team, even if he’s making less headlines than at any other point in his career.
