Is Jordan Henderson Good Enough for Liverpool?

It’s fair to say that Jordan Henderson has endured a bumpy ride since deciding to swap Wearside for Merseyside in Aug 2011, with not everything having gone according to plan for the young Liverpool midfielder.

Just over 18 months into his Reds career and the fact that some people are still debating whether the 22-year-old has the right qualities to be a Liverpool player says everything about the struggles that Henderson has undergone since arriving at the club from Sunderland in a much-publicised deal worth somewhere in the region of between £16 million and £20 million.

Henderson actually got off to a flying start to life at Liverpool by scoring a sumptuous goal in just his second Premier League game at Anfield against Bolton Wanderers in Aug 2011. However, that was about as good as it got for the player in what can only be described as a trying debut campaign on Merseyside.

Like manager Kenny Dalglish’s fellow big-money arrivals Andy Carroll (£35 million) and Stewart Downing (£20 million), Henderson was forced to play his early games for the club under an intense spotlight, and he often appeared to have the weight of the world on his shoulders, or more accurately, a multimillion-pound monkey on his back.

And, as Dalglish’s new-look and expensively assembled team began to struggle badly for both form and confidence in the second half of the campaign, so too did Henderson, culminating in his anonymous performance in Liverpool’s League Cup final win over Championship minnows Cardiff City last February when the England international got the hook with the Reds trailing early in the second half.

That performance seemed to sum up Henderson’s woes last season, a young man seemingly lost and at times out of his depth amongst the plethora of world-class operators at Liverpool, while being constantly shunted out to a wide-right berth by Dalglish also did the player few favours.

However, equally it was hardly a position that Henderson had never played before, while the club’s coaching staff, and owners who had splashed out millions on a full England international, would no doubt also have expected him to have the adaptability to be able to perform in any role he was required to.

Then came the departure at the end of the last campaign of the man who had invested so much faith in Henderson (he featured in 37 of Liverpool’s 38 Premier League games last season), with Dalglish being replaced at the helm by Swansea City head coach Brendan Rodgers, a manager with news ideas and a new way of playing too.

And for Henderson, as with both Carroll and Downing, the writing appeared to be very much on the wall in terms of his future career prospects with the Reds, as Rodgers told the player last August that the club were happy to accept an offer from Fulham for him and that he could leave. 

He explained, per the Daily Mail: 

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I wasn't playing regularly back in August so they gave me the option to go.

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It wasn't a nice thing to hear. But I just had to take it on the chin. So I said no. I didn't want to go anywhere. I came to Liverpool wanting to stay here for the rest of my career. I certainly didn't want to leave after a year.

OK, it might not have gone to plan at the start, but I knew it could turn around and I could get it right. Here you have people like Stevie and Luis Suarez and Pepe Reina and Carra, who have been the best players for many years.

You have to go in and straight away try to match their ability. You need to learn to perform like they perform and that is a hard thing to do immediately. It's a step up and a challenge and for a good while I couldn't really do it.

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However, like his fellow England midfield player Downing, Henderson decided to remain at Anfield and fight for his starting place in the team to prove all the naysayers wrong and in football. Sometimes there is nothing more dangerous than a wounded player with a point to prove.

And, despite not even starting his first top-flight match under the new boss until 25 November 2012, the persevering player gradually began to force his way into Rodgers’s first-team thinking through sheer force of will and personality, coupled with outstanding displays and commitment on the training pitches of Melwood.

So much so that now Henderson is an automatic starter in midfield for a Liverpool side that are currently flying in the league, even managing to keep red-hot striker Daniel Sturridge on the substitutes’ bench of late.

Meanwhile, in return Rodgers has been rewarded with Henderson’s best football since he joined the club, including crucial goals to help Liverpool overcome Udinese 1-0 in a must-win Europa League group game last December, as well as on the road in the top flight against both Arsenal and Aston Villa since the turn of the year.

Already Henderson has doubled his goals tally in all competitions from last season, and it is a feature of his game that he acknowledges he must keep working on if he wants to carry on progressing as a top-level midfield player.

Henderson said, per the Express:

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A lot of players do extra training. I tend to work on my finishing.

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I think it's important as a midfielder to contribute goals. The goalkeepers stay behind with Mike Marsh along with a few of us.

Scoring goals, it's such an important part of football. If a manager knows he can rely on a midfielder to score a few it means he's likely to play a lot.

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And maybe if he continues contributing more goals to the team’s cause, then further down the line Henderson will have earned the right to operate in his more favoured central-midfield berth, which would be a real sign that the quiet, teetotaller from Sunderland had really made it at Liverpool.

While as to whether Henderson is good enough to play for the Reds, I think his displays since forcing Rodgers to give him his chance in the first team at the back end of last year have done more than enough to answer that particular question.