I hear about this "run of games in the centre" quite regularly. He has had that, lets not kid ourselves.
Indeed. He leads the LFC appearances chart for the season. A fuckload of them have been in the centre of the park.
That said, I don't dislike the kid, but the transfer fee was ridiculous. As has been the continued insistence on persisting with him despite his performances not being quite up to the mark. As for how he will develop, as with any other young player, it won't just be a function of playing time, but also a function of how he's coached. And as with so many other things this season, I don't believe the management has too much of a clue of what kind of player they want him to be. And by that I don't only mean the position he should be playing, but also the kind of role he should be playing. That sort of vision requires a detailed analysis of his skillset and what he'd be best suited, but as of now, we seem to be really using a trial and error method, and that's really not doing him any favours.
The encouraging thing for me however is that he has a good attitude, a good motor, good mobility and fairly competent technical ability. Those are good raw tools to work with, provided you know what kind of player you want to mould him into. I think it was Farky who suggested a while ago that despite those raw tools, he didn't really see him ever excelling in a position where he'd be vested with significant attacking responsibility. Though I initially thought otherwise, I'm incline to agree with that now. I don't see anything exemplary in terms of his skill on the ball, vision or shooting for him to excel in such a role (having said that, it would've been intriguing to see him in an attacking role at United for instance, where he'd have been surrounded by players of considerably higher skill and quality, and could presumably have been coached to become a quality off-the-ball runner and goalscorer - though I just don't see that happening with us). I'm also not particularly excited about him playing as a partner to a holding player given that he just doesn't have the sort of passing ability you need to be a tempo-setting player. So the more I think about this, the more I believe that his best position may be in the holding role. The skillset required for that position isn't particularly advanced, rather what you need is discipline, consistency, tactical awareness and experience. It certainly worked to an extent with Lucas, and I could see it working with Henderson (especially given that I think Henderson has better tools to start off with than Lucas did). It could certainly be an option to consider, especially if Lucas doesn't return next season in the same form that he had prior to his injury.
