Benitez move for Heskey on hold

THERE ARE good reasons for deploring the effects of the January transfer window, as Mark Hughes – of all people – and Gianfranco Zola have done in recent days. A shrewd mid-season acquisition, however, can represent a potent catalyst, which makes it all the stranger that Liverpool are apparently content to wait until the summer before turning their interest in Emile Heskey into a done deal.

After years of shuffling players like a pack of playing cards, Rafael Benitez seems finally close to settling on his most effective line-up, and Liverpool’s improved performance in the Premier League this season is the most obvious dividend of his belated consistency. But amid the disappointment of conceding a late equaliser against Everton at Anfield on Monday night, it was clear the side’s most urgent requirement, if they are to maintain a challenge to Manchester United’s title, is an effective partner for Fernando Torres.

Once again Robbie Keane played like a man haunted by a €22 million transfer fee, failing to give the Spaniard the remotest semblance of support. It was Keane’s 18th league appearance since his arrival from Tottenham in the summer, and although each of his five goals has been greeted as a turning point, he looked no more attuned to the expectations heaped upon him than he did on his debut.

Liverpool cannot hope to win the league for the first time since 1989-90 with a two-man front line in which only one is functioning, and nowhere else in the club’s 35-strong first-team squad is there another player equipped to step into the role, a lack which underlines the criticisms of Benitez’s attitude to their Melwood academy made in Jamie Carragher’s recent autobiography. Hence the interest in recalling a man bought by Gerard Houllier from Leicester City for €11.9 million, then a club record, in 2000 and sold four years later to Birmingham City for just over half that amount.

As long ago as October it was apparent Heskey would not be staying with Wigan, whom he joined in 2006 for €5.9 million on a three-year contract, beyond this summer. The suggestion of Dave Whelan, the Wigan chairman, they would be prepared to entertain a bid of around €4.3 million was amended by his manager, Steve Bruce, who said only an “outrageous” offer would persuade the club to part with Heskey halfway through the season. Earlier this month the player confirmed he would be staying until the end of a campaign. Heskey knows if he waits until the summer, when his new club will be free of the need to pay a transfer fee, he will be at liberty to ask his agent to negotiate the sort of terms that made Steve McManaman a rich man when he left Anfield for Real Madrid in 1999.

Benitez seems content to go along with Heskey’s timetable, as does Martin O’Neill, who has also shown an interest on behalf of Aston Villa, where John Carew, his Norwegian central striker, seems unlikely to return from injury until next season. Given O’Neill presumably sees Heskey taking some of the weight off his brilliant young attackers, Gabriel Agbonlahor and Ashley Young, as Villa attempt to consolidate their new position among the clubs in line for Champions League places, his decision to sit back and wait seems odd.

It is Benitez, however, who would most obviously stand to gain from an immediate injection of Heskey’s qualities of power, intelligence and unselfishness into his front line, just as England benefited when the player was restored to the national team, first by Steve McClaren in 2007 and then by Fabio Capello last year.

Perhaps it is not too far-fetched to draw a parallel with the case of Manchester United, who were drifting through their 26th year without a league title in December 1992 when Alex Ferguson, needing a striker to compensate for the loss of Dion Dublin, made a spur-of-the-moment inquiry about Eric Cantona and found himself with a player who, to his surprise, turned out to be the presiding spirit of a new era of unprecedented success at Old Trafford.

That is what a mid-season gamble can achieve, and although there could hardly be two more different players or personalities than Cantona and Heskey, it is what, if Benitez continues to stay his hand in the 12 days that remain until the transfer window closes, Liverpool may be missing. And Heskey, too, might live to regret passing up perhaps his best chance of winning more than respect and a healthy bank balance.

GuardianService