Tuesday, November 25, 2008

Ian Rush: Robbie Keane Must Learn To Live With The Pressure

Robbie Keane is finding out the hard way just how different it is to play for Liverpool.

Playing up front for a club like Liverpool is totally different to playing for Tottenham, and I don’t mean any disrespect when I say that.

The pressure is completely different.

At a club like Tottenham you can get away with playing well in three of every six games. At Liverpool you have to perform five in every six.

That’s the kind of pressure Robbie Keane is discovering for the first time, and he has to learn to live with it.

I think he’s actually playing quite well – and certainly the team has performed well this season with him in it, Saturday’s match excepted.

But the number of chances he is missing is now starting to be commented upon and that will only add to the pressure he is feeling.

Some players have been unable to live with those unique pressures.

I’m thinking of strikers like Craig Bellamy, who was a great player for Blackburn but struggled at Anfield, Fernando Morientes who couldn’t reproduce his Real Madrid form in the Premier League and Emile Heskey, who is still England’s first choice centre-forward, but couldn’t live up to what was expected of him at Anfield.

In some situations I think Robbie has been trying too hard to prove himself, but it’s a difficult thing to do to ask players to relax when they find themselves in front of goal.

What Robbie has to do is to keep putting himself in those positions where he is getting goalscoring chances.

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