Fireman Skrtel setting a high bar by Stu Montagu

In 1953, when the Mighty Magyars famously dropped into Wembley to show England how badly they were getting football wrong, the correspondent from The Times, Geoffrey Green, described Billy Wright’s attempts to deal with the trickery of the likes of Puskas and Hidegkuti as that of a fire-engine racing to the wrong fire.

Given some of the media coverage at times last season, none more so than after the catastrophic collapse at Selhurst Park, you would be forgiven for thinking that Martin Skrtel had been cutting the same sort of figure as poor Billy Wright. You’d be wrong though. Despite there being more than a hint of similarity in the plight of the two men, due to being used in systems that have left them exposed to the chaos surrounding them, the Slovakian has almost always been heading to the right fire. He’s even been overtaking other fire-engines on the way.

In a season which saw many players go on exponential development curves and witnessed numerous reputedly decent teams annihilated by relentless pressing and quicksilver attacking it could be that, quite against an observer’s natural instincts, Martin Skrtel most typified Liverpool’s performances... and Brendan Rodgers’ management.

As with Jordan Henderson the season before, and to a lesser extent Flanagan and Sterling last year, his story last season was one that, at a point in time, saw him surplus to requirements to the first team and reportedly on his way out of the club. The desire to grab the slim opportunity he had to reclaim his worth to the team against Manchester United, to put in a man of the match performance and then retain the shirt for the rest of the season, is exactly the sort of mentality Rodgers so often speaks of wanting his players to have.

To finish the season as the top scoring defender in the league, with seven glorious efforts, is a totem to the massive improvement in effectiveness from set-piece situations that Rodgers has masterminded. Largely unremarked is that in vital moments of penalty areas containing static players he is generally on the move. He’ll go and make it happen. It won’t just fall in your lap. If Liverpool being deadly from dead-balls is the movie then Martin Skrtel is the trailer you use to give people the gist of how it’s going to go.

One of the most common footballing memes of last season was of Martin Skrtel holding people’s shirts. You haven’t been able to move for people pointing out that he’s doing it whether it be pundits, commentators or the wailing mass of opposition fans on all the vehicles they now have to wail. As ugly as it is, it is a solution to a problem that seems to be quite effective. It seemingly stops chances so he’s probably going to keep doing it, as doing what it takes, regardless of how ugly, was a bit of a theme for the man last season.

To state that he had the most clearances in the league last season isn’t really doing justice to just how far ahead of everyone else he was. His 423 clearances puts him 74 ahead of a small pack headed by Damien Delaney’s 349 in second place, with only 8 players in the whole league hitting 300. It should be noted none of the other seven of that eight played for a side that finished in the top seven - which makes sense given they generally have more of the ball and do less defending. When it comes to shots blocked he ranked third in the league, with only Caulker and Shawcross above him, and you have to scroll down to 14th place before you find someone from a team in the top eight in the league.

These numbers really shouldn’t be a surprise to anyone that watched Liverpool last season. On many occasions when the going got tough it was Skrtel that was digging in to get it done. For a ten minute period at Carrow Road it wasn’t so much defence v attack as Skrtel v Norwich. Even for that final, crushing, Crystal Palace goal (or even for his four own goals) it is Skrtel that was taking the issue into his own hands and going to sort the situation out: “We’ll sort out who should have gone afterwards but right now I’m going to put that fire out”.

No season will ever be unblemished for a defender but his aggressive front-foot defending and a comfort on, and use of, the ball that has gone largely under the radar have seen him typify a Liverpool side keen to dominate their opponents. It is no coincidence that both the WhoScored and Squawka statistical analysis sites have his average rating for last season as higher than any other defender in the league.

There is much talk of sorting out the Liverpool defence this season and of bringing in replacements but there is a school of thought that the defensive issues are structural, related to the style of play and not necessarily mainly down to individuals. If Rodgers is intent on sending the team out to play a similar way this season then anyone brought into the side to replace the Slovakian is going to have their work cut out.

The bar for “You lads all bomb up there and be ridiculously tricky and I’ll just try and hold the fort back here” was set exceptionally high last season.

Stu Montagu