How long can Alberto Aquilani be protected?

Football FanCast columnist Ed Jeffrey wonders how long Alberto Aquilani can be protected.

As the newspapers and message-board sages have been quick to point out, Rafa Benitez has a lot of questions to answer.

Liverpool’s season has already veered from the bad to the ugly (it hasn’t reached the heights of “good” yet), and for the fourth season running, silverware looks like a distant hope.

Amid all the uncertainty, there have been plenty of reasons mooted for the debacle. It’s certainly fair to say that a combination of no defence, no Alonso, no Torres (so far), and a below-par Gerrard have all contributed, not to mention a healthy sprinkling of bad luck.

So having said goodbye to our dreams for another season, all we can do now is look forward, and under these circumstances, Rafa’s refusal to play Alberto Aquilani looks all the more bizarre.

Aquilani had well-documented injury problems when he arrived, meaning his first appearance didn’t come until the Carling Cup game against Arsenal on 28^th October. Since then, we’ve played seven competitive games. That’s right, seven. Of those seven, only two (Lyon away & Everton away), have been the kind of games where you could reasonably say there were valid reasons for not pitching a new player into the fray.

The diminutive Italian’s absence was brought into sharp focus on Saturday as I peered through the gloom that pervaded the Darwen end at Ewood Park. Watching the Reds struggle through the mud with no urgency, no invention, and no creativity, the lack of a player of Aquilani’s calibre was glaring. Too many times attacks broke down through a total inability to find the killer pass, not that the killer pass was ever really an option given how static some of our players were.

One of Liverpool’s main problems at the moment is a complete lack of balance. Johnson & Kuyt are continuing to build their flourishing partnership, but on the left, Riera and Insua look devoid of confidence as well as talent. To compound matters, Mascherano and Lucas are far too similar to function effectively together.

My defence of Lucas is well-known amongst my friends, and I genuinely believe he will have a big part to play in future Liverpool squads. But for now, the combination of him and Mascherano is clearly not working. Neither player is what you would call forward-thinking, although in his renaissance since Argentina’s qualification for South Africa 2010, Mascherano has displayed the sort of urgency and drive going forward that others have been so badly lacking.

Aquilani will not be answer to quite all of our prayers (unless he discovers the key to keeping Torres fit), but he may just be the answer to the ponderous nature of our midfield play. Replacing Xabi is a near-impossible task, and there is no way Aquilani can fill that role perfectly. But time is running out for Benitez, and the sooner he gets The Little Prince out there and running our midfield, the closer the light at the end of the tunnel will look.

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