Spirit fingers!
If there’s one thing I enjoyed about this international break it’s that it gave me an opportunity to ignore the fact that Liverpool is absolutely terrible. When we last left the club, if you recall, they were struggling to draw with Birmingham City at Anfield, relying on a late-match dive by Thierry Henry protégé David N’Gog to gain a point. Injuries have been a part of the problem, but a general lack of depth and plain old bad play has been a bigger issue. Which brings us to our topic.
See, circling in the background since the beginning of August has been Liverpool’s enigmatic (and possibly fascist) Italian midfield import: Alberto Aquilani, formerly of Roma, who’s theoretically been tipped to replace Xabi Alonso if you forget that he doesn’t play like Alonso or even really play in Alonso’s position.
The thing is, Aquilani was bought on a scratch-and-dent special and has yet to actually, you know…play. Everyone thought this was resolved, of course; earlier in the week, with a big match against Manchester City coming up, Rafa Benitez was playing up Aquilani’s fitness and health and talking all about how he was going to start him Saturday.
Now word’s trickling out that that’s not likely to happen. With his starting debut date now being pushed back until the last week of November, I figured it was a good time to take a look back through the press clippings and see if Liverpool fans are just being impatient or if they’ve really been jerked around on Aquilani’s fitness. We’ll start in August.
August 8th: Liverpool have completed the signing of Alberto Aquilani for a fee of £20million from Roma, despite the fact the Italy international faces up to two months on the sidelines with an ankle injury.
According to Wikipedia, “month” is a surprisingly fluid term. It can mean anything from 27.212220 days to 30.436875 days, depending on what we’re talking about; for our purposes, however, we’re going to call a month four weeks.
August 8th was a Saturday; four weeks after that was September 5th, and another four weeks after that was October 3rd. So realistically speaking, it was reasonable to expect Aquilani to return by the Chelsea game on October 4th. If he couldn’t make that, however, it was completely reasonable for him to come back following the international break, which would’ve coincided with a debut of some sort on October 17th against Sunderland (that was a fun game, wasn’t it?). That’s not even factoring in the “up to” portion of the statement, which leaves open the possibility of a return earlier than that.
October 6th: Sunday’s 2-0 defeat against Chelsea highlighted Liverpool’s need for a creative force alongside Steven Gerrard in the middle of the park and the upcoming international break should serve as enough time for Aqualini to complete his rehabilitation and take his place in the match-day squad on Oct 17.
So fast-forward to October, then, and see how it’s going. And, in fact, Aquilani’s still listed as being on schedule for a Sunderland return. So we’re good, right?
October 22nd: Alberto Aquilani kicked his first ball in anger since becoming a Liverpool player when he came through 15 minutes of a reserve team fixture unscathed to hand manager Rafa Benítez some much needed good news.
So, okay, he missed the real Sunderland game. But he was back in time for the reserves, right? So it’s sort of the same thing (less fans, less beach balls, but still). And here’s the key: he came through unscathed. “The Telegraph” even says so…and they wouldn’t lie, would they? So a debut on Halloween against Fulham, right?
October 29th: “He needs to improve the fitness but he can pass in the final third and make a difference for us. He is closer every day but still he has to train harder and play games to improve. For us he could be important because we need that kind of player. But we can’t push too hard with him. We will help him.”…Aquilani will need far more than these 13 minutes, during which he functioned as a sweeper, to make a lasting impression.
This was after Aquilani came on for 13 minutes in the Carling Cup loss to Arsenal. He finished out the match without incident, and I had assumed that he was being saved for that Saturday’s game against Fulham. However…
October 31st: Italian midfielder Alberto Aquilani has picked up a virus, Benitez joking: “It is a virus but not swine flu, we haven’t got that here yet.”
Wait, that’s supposed to be funny how? See, now Liverpool’s a full month away from seeing Aquilani because he got some random virus (probably in his ankle) while playing. So, that’s fantastic. He didn’t play against Fulham, who Liverpool lost to. So, next week, right?
And the next two matches – against Lyon and Birmingham – were just as bad. Aquilani was theorized to play, developed some minor problem, and was kept out. He showed up briefly against Birmingham when it was too late, of course, but it’s not been consistent…and apparently, he’s not fit enough to play against Manchester City tomorrow, either.
Or let’s put it another way. Say Aquilani doesn’t play tomorrow: that would mean that his earliest possible debut as a starter is November 28th. If we’re calling a month four weeks, that’s TWO MONTHS LONGER than the initially reported two month recovery time…and there’s absolutely no guarantee that even that return date is accurate.
Compounding the issue is that we know very little about the player. He’s a hot prospect of Roma’s, but this story (the on-and-off injury story) was pretty much his entire season last year, too. He hasn’t played a complete match since Roma faced Arsenal last March in the Champions League.
And this is where Liverpool might be missing Rick Parry. Rafa Benitez, for all of his tactical innovations, does not have a great record on the transfer market already; buying a banged up prospect with the bulk of your transfer budget, only to have him not play for the first third of the season, is bad business. Even if Aquilani comes around after Christmas, Benitez screwed up on this one, and it’s going to make his ability to spend that kind of money next season in serious jeopardy.
Furthermore, Benitez has routinely risked the health of his other players. Torres has been playing with a sports hernia; Gerrard’s got a bad groin; Benayoun and Riera (reported to be out for a month after injuries suffered two weeks ago) are supposedly playing tomorrow. So why not risk Aquilani?
All told, the management of this injury has been terrible, and highlights a major problem with Liverpool’s season: nobody really seems to know what’s going on with Aquilani, but there really isn’t anyone there to manage things anyways.
In terms of his contribution, Aquilani was outshone last night by two other exotically unfamiliar names: Fran Mérida, the scorer of Arsenal’s first, about whom Wenger was too excited even to send out on loan, and Emiliano Insúa, the teenage Argentinian left-back who contrived Liverpool’s thunderbolt of an equaliser.
Wenger had the security, too, of seeing first-team returns for such reliable performers as Samir Nasri and goalkeeper Lukasz Fabianki.
By contrast there was little to justify the excitement of the Liverpool fans, who had turned up to last Sunday’s win over Manchester United with a banner depicting Aquilani in Roman finery, with the slogan: ‘A hero will rise’.
The hero is still to manifest himself. Still, the cheers rose from the away end every time he stretched on the touchline, and they drowned out Arsenal crowd’s jeers of “what a waste of money” when at last he came on. Aquilani was sent on too late to mount a successful chase of the game, however, with Benítez’s players powerless to respond to Nicklas Bendtner’s winner.
Aquilani will need far more than these 13 minutes, during which he functioned as a sweeper, to make a lasting impression. And to dispute the notion, put about so tirelessly by Arsenal supporters, that Arsène knows.
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Are we even certain that this “Aquilani” person actually exists?