On the eve of another season defining game for Liverpool FC, a Suarez shaped cloud still sits begrudgingly over Anfield and how he has been missed. Liverpool are a very different team without Suarez as they are with Andy Carroll.
Out of the shadows though an unlikely figure has emerged. All shoulders and no neck, the snarling Welsh Wizard from Cardiff, Craig Douglas Bellamy has rode into town and while other new arrivals have so far failed to live up to their early season promise and price tags Craig Bellamy has already repaid the only thing Dalglish had to give for him, faith.
Ten clubs in 15 years, few footballers rarely get a second chance and even though Liverpool has had a few second comings over the years this one feels different, this is Bellamys heyday, his swansong to a great career one he will hopefully finish at his boyhood club, who at 6 years old feel in love with Liverpool FC after seeing a boy outside his home wearing the classic crown paints jersey made famous by a team who owned that era much like Barcelona own this one.
Like any good war veteran Bellamys body is not without it's scars, He began collecting them early and had numerous lengthy breaks during his time at Norwich (eleven months in 3 seasons) and Newcastle. It was during his time at Man City that he first met the man who would turn his twilight years into his most memorable. That man was Raymond Verheijen.
It was former Manchester City boss Mark Hughes turned to Verheijen at the start of the 2009-2010 season and Bellamy an early sceptic of his system, recorded a diary during his training in an effort to disprove the theory was in the end so impressed by the Dutchman that he now pays to work with him at his own expense.
"He wrote the diary to kill us with it afterwards," said Verheijen. "But after six weeks it was the first pre-season that he did not get injured in his career."
"In the past, I used to train at 100mph until I was exhausted," said Bellamy. "No wonder I always broke down halfway through the season. I always thought this was a logical consequence of my playing style and I even started training harder when I was not fit."
Nearly 40 years after Netherlands legends Rinus Michels and Johan Cruyff unleashed Total Football on an unexpecting world, along comes a Dutchman espousing a new philosophy - periodisation. He has developed training methods which damage the body just a little bit in a responsible manner, after which the body recovers stronger.
Every one of the 4 football conditional qualities has its own specific training methods, with which a ‘overload’ stimulus can be given to the corresponding physiological process. When, subsequently, the indicated recovery time is taken, football conditional qualities will improve systematically. This in the end results in more and more explosive football actions during a match. The model is based on the laws and principles of conditioning.
If it is a concept that is unlikely to ever acquire Total Football's sexy cache, Verheijen believes periodisation - in essence a less is more approach to training - is important in allowing clubs to protect their key asset - players.
The 40-year-old Verheijen has an impressive pedigree. He worked with Guus Hiddink, Frank Rijkaard, Louis van Gaal and Dick Advocaat at three World Cups and three European Championships with Netherlands, Russia and Korea, as well as with the Korean national team at the 2010 World Cup finals in South Africa.
Rijkaard also used Verheijen when he coached Barcelona, as did Hiddink when he managed Chelsea, while Advocaat used the fitness expert when he was in charge of Zenit St Petersburg.
"The objective of periodisation is to play every game with your best 11 players," Verheijen told BBC Sport during an hour-long interview, following a presentation at the UKSEM sports medicine conference.
"First of all because you want to win and secondly because the fans deserve to see the best players." The idea that you start every game with your best team sounds like common sense. But a look at the statistics shows that it does not always happen, even though it is estimated that up to 70% of Premier League clubs are using computer and medical analysis to measure player performance and fatigue levels.
He believes as many as 80% of injuries are preventable, arguing that fatigue due to overtraining is the cause. "World Cup players start the pre-season fit but fatigued," stated Verheijen, whose football career was cut short by a hip injury. "So there is no need for fitness training in pre-season as this results in even more fatigue and, eventually, injuries due to a loss of coordination and control.
"People make training so important that it is like survival of the fittest and at the end of the week when you have a game you see who is left and say OK we will play with these 11 players."
Verheijen, who has a Uefa A coaching licence, and was Gary Speeds number two at Wales and although heralded as the reason behind the teams upturn in form may soon find himself on the fringes if Chris Colemans comments about coaches walking around thinking they are managers does not bode well for Verheijen, Bellamy, and Wales.
He argues that too many fitness coaches are not from a football background and do not fully understand the sport and its relationship to training and preparation. "Coaches should take the games as a starting point and build training sessions around them so players can fully recover and start the next match fresh, they are afraid their team will not be fit enough for the start of the season. However, with this 'high injury-risk' training regime - subconsciously - they make fitness development more important than team development."
Periodisation has been around as nearly as long as Total Football.Developed by Russian researcher Leo Matveev, it is an approach designed to prevent overtraining and result in peak performance. Most clubs would claim that their fitness regimes are designed to achieve that aim, but Verheijen suspects it is not happening enough.
"If football is an intensity sport, then less is more and you have to focus on the quality of training instead of the quantity," stated Verheijen, whose bête noire is double-training sessions.
"Doing two sessions a day in pre-season...I really I don't understand, because all you are doing is exhausting your players," added Verheijen, who believes different types of players - young players who have just joined the first-team or experienced defenders - should each be following specialised training plans.
"By doing one session a day with maximum intensity, when you come to November and December your players will be much fitter and fresher than they are normally are with the traditional approach."
Both Bellamy and Carlos Tevez were vocal critics of City manager Roberto Mancini's insistence on weekly double training sessions last season. Although their reasons were probably very different.
Within 10 days of Mancini taking over from Hughes in December 2009, Joleon Lescott, Sylvinho, Roque Santa Cruz, Stephen Ireland, Shaun Wright-Phillips, Micah Richards and Nigel De Jong all picked up injuries.
"That was amateur stuff," said Verheijen.
"You take over a team that has the best statistics in the Premier League in terms of work rate - the most sprints - and you have the best injury record, based on a quality approach: one session a day, with maximum intensity that is no longer than 90 minutes.
"Then you take over and you start doing two sessions, each session two hours long, which is totally the opposite."
Verheijen, who has also studied exercise physiology and sport psychology as well as taking a one-year Science in Football course, is not without his critics. Craig Duncan, head of human performance at Sydney FC, argues a reduction in training is not always positive.
"A problem is that there needs to be more corrective work to decrease the risk of injury through faulty movement patterns," Duncan commented.
"Specific strength training also needs to be incorporated as does flexibility and I have also had positive results from yoga.
"This is all supplementary work to work completed on the pitch. Recovery strategies also need to be enhanced so we don't necessarily have to train less just train smarter."
Other critics of Verheijen argue that his almost injury-free record is distorted by primarily working with international teams and also as a consultant.
Verheijen admits it is more difficult being a consultant but still firmly believes his methods are better than those employed by most coaches.
"A lot of coaches treat all the players the same way, whatever their age, whatever their body composition, whatever their injury history, whatever their playing position - everybody is doing the same training," Verheijen said.
"The culture in football is you either train or you don't train and there is nothing in between."
Craig Bellamy is the inbetween.
