Gerrard facing tough double blow as Saudi Arabia gamble turns into nightmare

13 January 2024 , 05:00

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Steven Gerrard's Al-Ettifaq sit eighth in the table (Image: Getty Images)

The Saudi Pro League is currently on a six-week break, and Steven Gerrard will doubtless be glad of the rest.

When the league halted on December 28 with a 1-1 draw at home to bottom of the league Al Hazem in front of 5,808 fans it was Al-Ettifaq's ninth game without a win. Gerrard's side are spending the break eighth in the 18-team league table having won six, drawn seven and lost six of their 19 matches. They've scored just 22 goals and conceded 22. So far, so very average.

And that is probably the hardest thing to take for a man who made a career out of the extraordinary, not the average. To watch some of Trent Alexander-Arnold's recent heroics for Liverpool, sometimes wearing the captain's armband, is to put you in mind of just what Gerrard often achieved on the pitch, and it was so, so much more than he is achieving in the dugout.

For starters, that dugout is in Saudi Arabia. As with Jordan Henderson's move there, there is a world where you can laud the decision of managers and players to step out of their comfort zone and try something new in a different country, but of course in this instance, and the instance of all the other football figures who made the move to Saudi Arabia last summer, it is difficult to see beyond the financial incentive being the main reason.

Suddenly even that looks to not be enough of a reason for Henderson to stick around though, with the former Liverpool captain believed to be eyeing an exit and a swift move back to England already.

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Jordan Henderson could leave the club already (Getty Images)

It is he who has been on the receiving end of the most ill-feeling over his move to the Middle East after everything he purported to be beforehand, and so if he did return soon he would very much have his tail between his legs, but then the same could be said for the other former Liverpool captain too.

We can mock the standard of the league all we want, and the pitiful attendances make that pretty easy, but Gerrard would have had grand designs upon taking the Al-Ettifaq job. Not in terms of anything he could win specifically, but in terms of being given a complete clean slate and almost laboratory conditions in which to carry out his tactical methods, perhaps honing them before returning to Europe.

Gerrard has lost his assistant manager Ian Foster (Getty Images)

Although denied the riches of the four Public Investment Fund clubs in the league, he's still brought in players such as Henderson, Gini Wijnaldum, Moussa Dembele, Demarai Gray and Jack Hendry, as well as his coaching staff.

That coaching staff has suddenly been reduced though with the news that Ian Foster, highly regarded for his work with England's youth teams, has made the move back to England to take over at Plymouth Argyle.

For Gerrard the move will provide echoes of when he lost Michael Beale at Aston Villa. Beale - who had made the move from Liverpool's academy to Rangers with Gerrard, winning the Scottish Premiership title and impressing in Europe before moving on to Villa - also set out on his own path in the Championship with QPR in June 2022. Gerrard, deeply unpopular with fans by the end, was sacked as Villa boss five months later.

Unai Emery's successes at Villa Park have subsequently added another layer on top of the Gerrard story in the Midlands, and now facing the exits of Foster and potentially of Henderson he could end up looking a little lost, and pondering just where his career goes next.

Mark Jones