Ikki
Hall of Fame Member
He's close to it, but he's not it. Its Gerrard. Carrick does the bare minimum what Gerrard does in terms of keeping tempo, being the passing fulcrum; but does not come within a country mile of Gerrard in terms of actually creating chances, assists and scoring. Even though they play the same position and role.
I remember this was discussed a few pages back but Gerrard simply never gets rated properly when his role has been primarily to distribute the ball. To put Gerrard's season in context; he's only slightly worse than Mata in terms of contributing to goals and creating chances, despite playing a very deep role, yet still manages to pass at a similar accuracy clip as a Carrick even though he has to force the issue at times because he has creative burden of the team. In fact, the only thing Carrick does distinctly superior to Gerrard is pass more in volume (Liverpool play a double pivot at times which keeps Gerrard's numbers down) and they have basically similar defensive contribution as well.
This was actually one of Gerrard's best seasons, he hasn't missed a minute of football in the premier league either. For me this is just confirmation of the previous discussion - unless Gerrard has a blinder of a game the neutrals rarely notice now.
TBF, I also think Yaya and Fellaini (even though at times he played further up) were better too. Carrick is there largely on the merit of his team's position IMO - not that he hasn't had a fine season but not that fine of a season. As I said before, I was surprised Cazorla didn't make it because he's basically Mata except even when he doesn't score or assist he tends to boss the game. Arteta has also been brilliant for the majority of the time.
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