Babel bursts but Aquliani shines in Emirates cameo

Published 17:34 30/10/09

The last time Liverpool travelled to North London and fielded a team of youth and reserve team players, Rafael Benitez was mocked by the media. “You’ll never win anything with kids and reserves”, they told him. But win they did against a full-strength Tottenham Hotspur side in December 2004.

Five years ago the line-up the Spaniard sent out was not a patch on the one that took to the field at the Emirates Stadium on Wednesday night. However, they succeeded where Jay Spearing and co failed by grinding out a result to win through to the next stage of the competition.

Andriy Voronin was frustrating to the extreme but for a player who came to us for free you can’t really expect much from a Bundesliga veteran who would look more at home at a Whitesnake concert than he does on a football pitch. The Ukrainian managed to play a relatively consistent thirty minutes in the second half and did appear, at times, to be trying too hard.

Unfortunately the same cannot be said for Ryan Babel. Everybody’s second-favourite Twitter addict (no one could ever beat Darren Bent’s infamous Levy rant) will no doubt have been straight onto the micro-blogging site at the final whistle to slag off the 5,000 “haterz”, as he likes to call them, who made the trip to the Emirates to watch him dally on the ball as some form of justification for his dubious status as a Liverpool player.

The Dutchman is very keen to post pictures of the dugout an hour before kick-off telling his fanbase that it is his “seat” for the day. There is actually a reason for that that has been evident for the past 18 months but still the penny fails to drop. If he wants to start receiving ‘positive energy’ from fans. he should consider tweeting a picture of his seat on a one-way flight out of Liverpool John Lennon Airport. His only real contribution was a simple knock-down header to Emiliano Insua who fired arguably the best first goal any Liverpool player has had the pleasure of scoring. The Argentine’s half-volley would have won the Goal of the Month award had it been scored in the Barclays Premier League.

Another positive was the debut of Alberto Aquilani. It’s been a long and arduous road on his rehabilitation from an ankle problem but he made a very good first impression with some insightful passing and even an attempt at an overhead kick in the last few minutes. If he can continue to show the vision that allowed him to spray cross-field balls the way he did, by Christmas, the Kop will be asking “Xabi who?”

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