Football - Liverpool FC: Footballers’ foot in mouth disease is spreading fast

Sep 16 2009 by Our Correspondent, Liverpool Daily Post

Football - Liverpool FC:  WHEN footballers open their mouths, it’s usually best to close your ears.

Whether it’s ex-players earning a living, offering banal observations from a studio sofa, or current stars describing their feelings on scoring a special goal while simultaneously massacring the English language, it’s a pretty safe bet you’re not going to get searing insights into the human condition.

What you might expect though, is a little introspection and self-awareness when bearing their innermost thoughts to the media.

The breathtaking audacity of Ryan Babel’s allegations that he has been denied a fair opportunity to display his worth told us all we need to know about this most disappointing acquisition.

If Robbie Keane had been given half the chances that the Dutchman has enjoyed we might still have had a more acceptable alternative to Fernando Torres than untried Ngog and the testing Voronin.

Babel’s plea to ‘let him go’ will surely have brought a deafening riposte of ‘and so say all of us’ from the vast majority of fans frustrated by his inability to produce anything at the end of predictable runs spent trying to work the ball onto his right foot.

Never the bravest of players, his work-rate is below par and he shows little evidence of being able to outwit defenders who either show him the left wing or are content to let him run across the penalty area before he gets unloaded.

Albert Riera has also apparently expressed his displeasure at a lack of starting opportunities, obviously considering his elevated status with the Spanish national side should be enough to grant him a regular spot.

While Riera can mount a more convincing case than Babel, he’d still need Rex Makin to make it stick.

After an encouraging start, Albert has too often settled for the easy option when we’re crying out for penetration and craft down the left flank; he needs to offer more than just ‘balance’.

Both these malcontents would be well-advised to follow the excellent example of Yossi Benayoun, whose sparkling form since Christmas has surely made him one of the first names on the teamsheet these days.

Given the unhelpful, selfish squawks from Babel and Riera, it was disheartening to hear Pepe Reina adding to the miasma over the weekend with what appeared, to my suspicious mind, to be a carefully calculated Benitez-inspired nudge to the owners to release some more funds for player acquisitions.

Personally I’m getting a little tired of the ‘pleading poverty’ line, but I’ll leave that for another day.

Normally Pepe is meticulously ‘on message’, stressing the need to stay positive and restoring some balance when the doom-mongers are holding sway.

Which made it all the more disappointing to hear him talking of a title challenge being ‘unrealistic’, being too reliant on Torres and Gerrard, and how the players were ‘resigned to’, rather than frustrated with, the lack of new additions to the squad.

Not the sort of talk we’re looking for, Pepe, tending to confirm my impression that the team were indulging in some form of sub-conscious sulk at the start of the season following the departure of Xabi Alonso.

We expect ambition, not realism, from those wearing the red shirt, and we don’t expect those being paid squillions of quids for the privilege to be ‘resigned’ to anything at this stage of the season.

At the start of another European campaign, Reina will do well to remember the pessimistic view of Steven Gerrard at the start of the 2004-5 tournament; and we all know what happened then.