What complete and utter nonsense from Aldo

I’m a huge fan of the player that John Aldridge once was. All the time he spent at Sociedad and later Tranmere, he should’ve been with Liverpool, let’s be honest; he was always too good to be anywhere else. But lately, he’s been making some pretty spurious comments regarding his former club and one or two of their current players. The latest of these are his comments made a couple of days ago about Jay Spearing’s recent performance against Sunderland; apparently, ‘Jay’ is a far better player now than Lucas was 3 years ago.

What complete and utter nonsense from Aldo. Lucas is barely a year older than Spearing and has played well over a hundred games for the club. He’s matured into one of our most important players and has stepped up to replace Mascherano to the point where we don’t even miss him now. Go back 12 months and he was the biggest scapegoat, probably in the history of the club and I remember hearing Aldo being one of a chorus of voices asking for Lucas to be dropped because of it. Playing in the shadow of the best player (in your position) in the world is no easy task and in the Argentine captain’s absence Lucas has blossomed into probably the best in his position in the league. He is at least the best tackler in the league, given the recently released stats from the Premier League.

Spearing had one (1) good game, against Sunderland and let’s be honest, they are not a great team; we could’ve easily won by 4 or 5 on Sunday and there were top performances all over the field. He is 22 and has been struggling to get into the first team since he was 19. At which age Lucas had won Brazil’s player of the year and was being capped by his country, before being lined up by numerous top clubs throughout Europe. Aldo’s comments are void.

As much as I like John Aldridge, he appears to suffer from something a lot of ex-players do: he seems to think that, as an ex-professional, his opinions are valued above all else; that his is the most valid of all opinions, as somebody that once played the sport. Sadly, far too many fans also believe this and so, we will now face an end-of-season push from some sections of our supporters to put Spearing in the first team. More than likely, in the place of Lucas. Such is the weight of opinions like Aldo’s amongst some fans.