Bellamy’s imminent departure bad news for Liverpool

Amidst another summer of extraordinarily high turnover at Anfield, it seems that Craig Bellamy will be moved on after just one season. It is a great shame, for he offers rare pace and dynamism. Although seldom at his best last campaign, the Welshman did enough to show he can be of great use to Liverpool – not least in scoring in the Camp Nou.

Ironically, the events leading up to his best performance of the season probably secured his exit. The infamous golf club incident was a reminder of Bellamy’s less savoury side, which, though there are signs he is maturing (he was recently handed the Welsh captaincy), still gets in the way of his footballing qualities. Thus, for Rafa Benitez, a great believer in the importance of team spirit, the choice between Bellamy and the less antagonistic Peter Crouch appears to be an easy one.

The shame, of course, is that one of them should go at all. Andriy Voronin, signed from Bayer Leverkusen on a bosman, patently lacks the pedigree and sheer class of his former strike partner Dimitar Berbatov; even allowing for the lack of a transfer fee, it seems a slightly perplexing signing – he scored 36 goals in 109 starts for Leverkusen. With Fernando Torres having signed, a trio of alternative strike partners of contrasting styles in Dirk Kuyt, Bellamy and Crouch would have given Liverpool genuine variety and perhaps the best strike force in the Premiership.

If Bellamy does move, there will be some regret, for his performances at Blackburn in the last few months of the ‘05/06 bordered on the astounding, with innumerable terrific strikes, such as at Portsmouth, among his 17 goals in just 26 starts. Moreover, he did enough to suggest he could be of great use for Liverpool in scoring nine goals and creating a further five. Against that, however, will be a sizeable profit on the £6million Liverpool played his former club, as, if he goes, Bellamy will probably yield around £10million.

Given how hard it is to find regular Premiership goalscorers, it seems sure that almost all clubs outside the top five will be desperate to sign him, even allowing for the perceived risk of a dressing-room rift. Blackburn, for whom he was so excellent, will certainly be near the front of the queue, and the prospect of Bellamy and Benni McCarthy in tandem will have fans salivating. Aston Villa, Man City, Middlesbrough and West Ham, each with money to spend, are also in desperate need of a quality striker.

If Bellamy is indeed forced out, he should be enormously frustrated, for his palpable talents are meriting of the higher echelons of the Premiership. Still he has only himself to blame. Bellamy took several months to settle; he never reached his Blackburn heights; and, regardless of his performance at the Camp Nou, his sheer stupidity at the prior training camp must have convinced Benitez that, for all his footballing gifts he was not worth keeping at Anfield. Whoever secures his signature must work hard to channel his gifts in the right direction – if they do so, they will have a devastating striker on their hands.

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