How many of these midfielders was Steven Gerrard better than?

I voted that he was better than Souness and Keane, but I think he was every bit the equal of Scholes and Vieira.

 

Big British Vieira mate? :icon_mrgreen:

Or Keane

Hierro was superb, always liked him as a centre back though! Some players I'd forgotten all about there, Aldair, Hassler and co!

 

Just so you kids (who never saw him play) can get it straight, Souness was better than any of the players listed in the poll.

 

All except Scholes.

Very hard choice between the two, think Scholes just edges it,

 

Scholes and Keane were better. But Gerrard was better than Vieira and Souness in my opinion.

 

When comparing Paul Scholes and Steven Gerrard, the way I try to think of it is to take the two players and swap them over into each other's career and imagine how they would have done.

Would Paul Scholes have been able to carry some ordinary Liverpool teams the same way Steven Gerrard did? Not for me.

Would Steven Gerrard have looked as good as Paul Scholes if he was surrounded by Roy Keane, David Beckham and Ryan Giggs? Absolutely he would, in my opinion. In fact I'd say he'd have looked even better.

That is all speculation of course.

Looking at the poll results I can't help feeling Steven Gerrard is somewhat under-rated on here. His legacy may well be damaged by the fact he didn't win as many trophies as he should have. If he had a few Premiership titles and a couple more Champions League medals to his name then I think people look at him very differently. He certainly would have won a lot more if he had left Liverpool after Istanbul. Nobody seems to hold that against Paul McStay though when he made the same mistake by staying at Celtic when he should have left. Strange.

 

Just looking back on this I think I was being a tad harsh on Gerrard, but then I was think about purely from a midfield dominating perspective rather than in terms of their abilities as players. Because if you're talking about ability and everything that comes with it then Gerrard was arguably the best out of the lot. I was kinda comparing them in terms of CM's and how I thought Vieira, Scholes and Keane all out performed him in that regard. However Gerrard's best season for me was when he had Alonso and Mascherano behind him and he was playing just off of Torres. It gave him freedom that a CM role did not allow him and you could see the effect it had on the Liverpool team. it seems to be a classic tactic of Benitez, getting your most talented players very close to each other and centrally and filling the squad with players that enable them to play. I.e he had Beneyoun and Kuyt on the wings, two hard working players, with Mascherano and Alonso as insurance policy. This gave Gerrard a lot of freedom to that what he wanted behind Torres and the team benefitted from it. So in that aspect I'd say Gerrard was a phenomenal player, because I doubt if any manager would go out of their way to give Scholes a role like that where the rest of the team was geared around his attributes. I think Gerrard probably had the most to his game out of all of those players. In terms of dictating play and dominating games as a CM I'd definitely say Keane, Vieira and Scholes were better, but in terms of an overall player Gerrard was probably the best.

In fact it's probably a shame that other managers didn't try to use Gerrard in the same way much earlier, he always seemed to just play a restricted CM role or even shunted out wide for other CM's. There was a period when Capello just took over at England where Gerrard played just off of Rooney and that also worked brilliant because they developed and excellent understanding but that idea was also scraped.

I think I'd rather have Vieira in my team as a CM because he was the complete package, however if you wanted a special player who could open up defences or come up with special moments then it's Gerrard in his prime, with the idea of building a team to get the best out of him.

 

That was Gerrard's best season because that was his best position. A criticism of him is he couldn't run a game in the same way Xavi, Scholes or Pirlo could. In the Istanbul game, it was Houllier bringing Hamann on at half time that also let him play off the frontman where he could be more effective.

I don't really like comparing Keane/Vieira with the likes of Scholes and Gerrard because they play in different positions. If you asked me who I'd prefer to have in my team, my first question would be who would he be playing alongside. Obviously Scholes/Gerrard are going to have better attacking qualities, and Keane/Vieira better defensive ones.

I just think in an all-time EPL XI, I'd have Scholes next to Keane or Vieira. That tells me that Scholes was better than Gerrard imo. I'd say the other two are superior as well but if you asked me who I'd rather play next to Makelele then it will obviously be Gerrard. But I'd say Keane/Vieira were better players than him as well.

 

My opinion exactly.

The reason I rate Lampard and Scholes slightly better is they were just as consistent as Gerrard, but with more success.

I think Gerrard if he had followed Mourinho would have been the best...We would have atleast got more out of him.

 

You mean Benitez?

 

Yea, of course it was

 

Frank Lampard. Now there's a player I definitely would not rate above Steven Gerrard. The only things Lampard could do better than Gerrard were time his runs into the box and finish. Passing, tackling, dribbling, crossing, long range shooting, skill on the ball and heading, I would say Steven Gerrard was better at all those things. Gerrard was also more versatile than Lampard who could only really play one role effectively.

Again it's like the Gerrard-Scholes argument for me. Take Gerrard and slot him into Mourinho's Chelsea midfield and he would have done everything Lampard did and a lot more. He would have had a platform to display the full range of his talents and he would have won a sackload of trophies(just as Lampard did).

Frank Lampard's not even close to Gerrard in my opinion.

 

I wouldn't really argue with that to be honest.

I rate Gerrard very highly, and like you say, if he was at the likes of Chelsea I think we'd see a lot more of what we seen from him at Liverpool.

I'll never understand the people who say he was overrated though.