Crouch: I still have lots of goals in me

Mar 14 2007 by Ian Doyle, Liverpool Daily Post

PETER CROUCH has vowed to end the season in the same manner it started as he aims to safeguard his Liverpool future.

Anfield manager Rafael Benitez will make a striker a top priority when he enters the transfer market in the summer armed with the backing of the club’s new American owners.

Ukrainian World Cup striker Andriy Voronin will already arrive at the end of the season on a free transfer from Bayer Leverkusen at the end of the season as Benitez reshapes his underachieving forward line.

Liverpool have netted just 44 goals in 29 Premiership games this campaign, a shortcoming underlined when they failed to convert any of a multitude of chances in the recent home games against Manchester United and Barcelona.

Crouch is currently recuperating from an operation on his broken nose that will most likely sideline him until the first leg of the Champions League quarter-final against PSV Eindhoven on April 3.

But having scored 10 times in his first 11 games for club and country this season, the 26-year-old is hopeful of a similarly goal-laden run-in to convince he should remain in Benitez’s long-term plans.

“Goals are the things that are most likely to keep me in favour with the manager,” said Crouch. “As a striker you have got to score goals, and if called upon you have got to do your best for the team.

“Personally, I want to go on a goalscoring run like any other striker and I’m sure I will.

“It gets a bit annoying when people talk about Liverpool needed a regular goalscorer. I feel that when I’ve played this season, I’ve scored goals and certainly at the start of the season I was on a good run with my country as well.

“Whenever I play, I feel as though I can get goals and it’s the same with the other lads as well.”