Re: Liverpool Thread
Something that hasn't been mentioned though is Aquilani doesn't suit Liverpool's style of football either so even if he was to play most matches I'm not sure he'd play at his best anyway.
yep. that's infact the reason why i always thought this was not a good move for both liverpool and alberto.
alberto is the most "vertical" midfielder in europe today. there isn't another midfielder that has his same sense of verticality (or uprightness) of football. on this concern he's much closer to a trequartista than a central midfielder (although he's not a real trequartista).
liverpool on the other side, is the most horizontal top team in europe today (and that's the obvious consequence of having a spanish coach, as the horizontal development of the play is the traditional trademark of the spanish school).
this peculiarity of liverpool's game is also the reason why u're struggling so much this season. horizontal football can work only as long as u have a damn good regista in the middle of the pitch. now u don't have it anymore, but the players still act as if xabi was still there (and that's what makes liverpool so flat and predictable).
and just to make the situation even more complicated, there's another thing to take into account. playing for years with a regista spoils the rest of the team. i'm not implying the players tend to become lazy, but they get used to that confortable feeling that the ball (better yet, the pass coming from the regista) is gonna create the opening, is gonna build the play.... and not their off the ball movement.
and it's really hard to detox from the regista addiction, to realise that the team doesn't have a fulcrum anymore and that it's up to each and every player to step up their own game to give some fluency to their football.
actually bringing in a player like aquilani might coming handy to help the players to "move on", coz aquilani has exactly the opposite impact on his teammates a regista usually has. while the regista effects his teammates by "calming them down", by making them feel more confortable, aquilani keeps everyone around him in a constant "alert status" that, long term, changes their way to interpretate the game. alberto is not a guy who gets the ball and tries to do everything on his own. he demands partecipation from his teammates, he involves them in his game (and u can notice this by watching how many one-twos he tries). and this, in the long term, tends to bring his teammates in his same wavelenght.
but.....
for alberto to have such a huge influence on his teammates will be almost impossible. first of, coz he barely speaks the language. second, coz he's not a famous star (i believe most of his teammates didn't really saw him playing before he joined liverpool), hence they can't have that sort of trust in him required to allow him to change their game. and 3rd (and most important) coz he won't ever be able to have such an influence on the team if he doesn't play on a consistant basis..... and aquilani's history tells us he's never played more than 35 matches per season.
and the fact that liverpool already has 2 mezz'ali (gerrard and benayoun) certainly doesn't help him either, for 2 reasons.
1- it drastically decreases his chances to play in that position, pushing him backwards as a pure central midfielder.
2- playing as a central midfielder with a mezz'ala ahead of him (gerrard) his ability to break the tempo of the play becomes useless, coz he obviously can't just skip the whole 3\4 of the pitch (wich would be his normal instinct) and accelerate the rhythm of the plays.
but hey, i hope i'll be proven wrong on all accounts and that alberto will become a huge asset for the team, for both alberto's and liverpool's sake
liverbird said:
Totally agree. I saw him a lot in Roma and I know what Alberto is capable of. What a pitty that we have this awful medical stuff and I dont know who is our phisycal coach but it is incredible that all our players have problems with injuries.
well i can't really talk about liverpool's medical staff, as i don't know about it, but i'm afraid having the best medical staff in the world would help that much, as the main problem here is alberto's fragility itself (and since u know him from his roma days, u'll obviously know what i'm talking about
).
That answer was pure class
