Actually spent some time watching a bit of his career after reading this thread the other day, I've always heard about his talent, but then suddenly realised that I'd never actually seen any footage of him when he was breaking through. Obviously it's an extremely unscientific way of going about things, but I had a look at every goal he's ever scored in a montage.
What struck me was the manner in which he scores his goals changed quite so dramatically over the 5 year (2009-2014) period the video concentrated on. At the beginning, when he was coming into the Inter team, he was often coming from a wide position, playing on the shoulder of the last defender and getting into goal-scoring positions using his strength and his pace. He showed a real desire to get on the end of chances, and you could see that a number of the goals he scored came from quick counter-attacks where his speed has a real asset. As the time went on though, these goals began to dry up. He began to be scoring from either set-piece situations or from picking up some pinball in the box - but the most bizarre thing is that every so often he would pull out a goal which showed he hadn't lost any of his physical ability, just some of his desire.
Now, there have been a few reports about how he has been behaving at Liverpool and at Milan over the past three seasons, but nothing like the history of controversy that went on before. Personally, I thought he was somewhat hung out to dry by Rodgers; I think he was an easy scapegoat, and don't think his overall play or his effort here was particularly lacking. The entire team was a misfiring, dysfunctional outfit and that was by far the worst situation for him to come into, especially with the intense scrutiny he was always going to be under from the UK media. His confidence plummeted and I don't think it's going to come back any time soon, and nor do I think that Klopp is likely to give him a chance. What we can achieve this season is just too important to be derailed by the potential antics of Balotelli; we've already seen how little patience the boss will have with his decision to send Sakho home from the tour. It is a crying shame though, because I do feel that he has been trying hard for the last few years and things have not been falling for him, which is not exactly a huge motivator for him to do keep trying - especially when the majority of his success coincided with him acting out.
We could (touch wood) have a massive injury crisis at some point this season and be left with Balotelli as one of our only options, but it does seem extremely unlikely. A pity that he couldn't have stuck away a few of the chances in his first season here, because I'm sure he'd be remembered a lot more fondly as a result.
