Liverpool Should Look Beyond Jordan Henderson to Replace Steven Gerrard

As Liverpool desperately searched for an equaliser against Chelsea during the extra time of this week’s League Cup semi-final second leg, Jordan Henderson spurned a glorious opportunity to take the tie to a deciding penalty shootout. 

In the ninth minute of extra-time, five minutes after Chelsea had taken the lead in the game and the tie, Raheem Sterling surged down the left flank and floated over a brilliant cross, but Henderson in front of goal and under no real pressure glanced the ball wide.

It might seem harsh, but such a miss appeared to lend weight to the argument Henderson is not the man to replace Steven Gerrard next season.

You can imagine Gerrard would have buried the chance before rallying his team to a surprise victory, but instead Henderson missed and Liverpool were out.

This is not to demean Henderson, an improving player with a long future ahead of him at Anfield, but rather to stress when Gerrard leaves in the summer Liverpool don’t make do with what they have and turn to Henderson as their new midfield leader.

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Liverpool will need a player who can provide more dynamism and crucially more goals from midfield to accommodate the loss of Gerrard.

Goals is the one area of Henderson’s game that is severely lacking, especially when compared to his current Liverpool captain.

This season alone Gerrard has scored nine in all competitions, while Henderson has only claimed three.

Since arriving from Sunderland for an estimated £20 million in the summer of 2011, Henderson has managed just 16 goals in all competitions compared to Gerrard’s vastly superior haul of 42.

In the wake of Gerrard announcing his departure from Liverpool this summer, the Liverpool manager Brendan Rodgers, as reported in the Guardian, discussed the challenge of replacing him.

"

There is no doubt Steven moving on leaves a void on and off the pitch but the club has to keep moving forward to bring in the best players we can to this wonderful football club…We need to replace that quality either through some of our young players getting an opportunity or our players stepping up to the mark but also by bringing in that quality. Time will tell on that.

"

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Rodgers must have seen enough of Henderson to know now he is not the man to fill this void and Liverpool instead need to spend.

The portents are not good for the club. Under Rodgers, Liverpool have lost several leading players and failed to adequately replace each of them. 

Pepe Reina was swapped for Simon Mignolet, Jamie Carragher has never truly been replaced in the heart of the defence, and most glaringly of all, last summer Liverpool allowed Luis Suarez to leave for Barcelona and filled the striking vacancy with Mario Balotelli, who so far has failed to score a single goal in the Premier League this season.

Liverpool can’t afford to now get the player who replaces their figurehead Gerrard so horribly wrong, and they must start looking beyond Jordan Henderson.

Earlier this month Rodgers told the Guardian: "This is Liverpool, we have to be in the running for the world’s best."

Whoever replaces Gerrard this summer needs to be proof of this.