Ex-Liverpool manager Rafa Benitez signed £17m flop Alberto Aquilani to replace Xabi Alonso in 2009 following the latter’s transfer to Real Madrid. Yet the Italian midfielder wasn’t the preferred choice at Anfield and was only bought because he was cheaper than primary target David Silva.
Silva has obviously since gone on to become a Premier League legend as a result of his 10 years and four titles at Manchester City, who landed him in 2010 a year after Liverpool were on his tail.
Aquilani, on the other hand, played just 28 times for Liverpool in two years on Merseyside, while an injury he was carrying meant fans had to wait three months just for his debut.
Liverpool had run Manchester United close in the 2008/09 Premier League title race, with Alonso one of the main string pullers for the Reds that season. But a £30m transfer to Real Madrid in the summer left a gaping hole in Benitez’s midfield that needed filling.
The Athletic notes that Benitez, having tried to sell Alonso in 2008 and sign Gareth Barry to, in his own words, ‘balance’ and to ‘make some money’, tried again for the Aston Villa star. But Manchester City secured his signature early for just £12m.
Silva was 23 at the time. The previous year he had started four of Spain’s five games at Euro 2008 and was already well known to Benitez as he was rising through the Valencia youth ranks at the time the Liverpool boss was in charge at Mestalla.
“David Silva was very much of interest,” a member of the club’s recruitment staff under Benitez has revealed to The Athletic.
“Rafa was Valencia manager when he was in their academy and knew his father, who had worked at the training ground there. He would have been perfect but he just wasn’t affordable. If we’d had the money to make it happen, we would have signed Silva 100 per cent.”
The same source explained that it was not possible for Liverpool to simply spend all of the money received from the Alonso on a replacement as some was needed to service interest on a bank loan.
“The owners wanted a chunk of the Xabi money to pay the interest on the loans so there was no chance of being able to reinvest the full £30m,” the staff member said.
Despite Aquilani’s form for Roma, two factors helped Liverpool afford the player, The Athletic writes. One was Roma’s financial situation that made them willing to sell, the other was that Aquilani was injured – “If he had been fit he would have been too expensive for us.”
Having come so close in 2009, Liverpool fell away after that. Replacing peak Alonso with an injured Aquilani made the team worse, while Fernando Torres also began to suffer with injuries. They subsequently finished 2009/10 in seventh place, their lowest in 11 years.
Anfield legend Jamie Carragher has also previously alluded to finances at that time having an impact on how competitive Liverpool could be with the Premier League’s other big clubs, explaining progress always had to be much slower than at Manchester United.
“Rafa came in and we won the Champions League [in 2005] but we were nowhere near the top sides in Europe at that time,” Carragher told Sky Sports last month. “It was a great journey and we got a little bit of luck but we were nowhere near those top sides, we needed to build under Rafa and [the 2008/09 season] was almost year four or five.
“Similarly, under Gerard Houllier, if Manchester United weren’t happy with a season, they could just go and blitz the transfer market and get themselves to number one position, whereas we had to get better and stronger under Rafa Benitez and it culminated in that season.”
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Source : 90min