Things never quite worked out for Robbie Keane at Liverpool.
Brought to the club by Rafael Benitez in the summer of 2008 for a reported £19m fee, the striker was tipped to succeed following a successful six-year spell with Tottenham Hotspur.
Keane signed a four-year contract with the Reds, though lasted only six months at the club before re-joining Spurs in February 2009.
It’s a well-documented fact that the former Republic of Ireland international never truly saw eye-to-eye with Benitez during his short stay at the club, and this was largely down to disagreements over where Keane was best suited position-wise.
"He tried to turn me into something I'm not, and that was always going to be a recipe for disaster as someone used to scoring goals”, said the 39-year-old when previously reflecting on how was made to play left-wing during his Liverpool career, during an interview with Pundit Arena.
While Keane listed being played out of position as a reason behind his move not working out, one of his former Liverpool teammates, Jamie Carragher, believes this was a transfer that didn’t make sense from the off.
“I’ll be honest with you, I didn’t understand why we bought Robbie Keane in the first place”, Carragher told The 42 .
“What I mean is: Robbie Keane was a top player for Tottenham. But the season before, Steven Gerrard was playing up alongside [Fernando] Torres as the number 10. We had done it for the second half of the season, and I think Stevie set-up 20 goals.
“We had Torres up front. So, when we signed Robbie Keane I was like, ‘why would you break that up?’ People say you can move Stevie back, but he was playing that well there."
He continued: “It was a surprise to be honest when he came in. And Robbie Keane’s problem was that Torres was injured a lot. So, he ended up playing centre forward and Stevie was behind him. And probably [ideally], you’re thinking of Robbie just floating around Torres.”
Carragher refused to rule out that Keane’s Reds career could have panned out differently, however, should Benitez not have been the manager in charge at the time.
“Him and Benitez just never clicked, straight away”, admitted the former Liverpool defender.
“I think under a different manager, it would have worked.
“I just think maybe it was the wrong time, wrong manager. But I say ‘wrong manager’. Rafa Benitez might say ‘wrong player’.”
