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"Ryan Babel is trying the patience
of his manager"
Tony Barrett
Liverpool
Echo
Sunday 30 November
When Dutch football magazine Sportsweek
reported
this week that Ryan Babel is running out of patience
with life at Anfield, one can only hope he was misquoted,
misinterpreted or misrepresented.
Because if anyone's patience is being tested it is
that of his manager, his team-mates and the Liverpool
fans who are all still waiting for signs Babel is about
to start fulfilling his clearly rich potential.
The former Ajax man has now been at Anfield for 18
months and in that time he has shown enough flashes
of natural talent and ability to suggest he could become
one of football's biggest stars.
Crucial goals scored against Manchester United in the
league this campaign and Arsenal in last season's Champions
League also indicate Babel is far from being intimidated
by the big occasion.
His qualities are there for all to see and with the
physique of a middleweight boxer and the pace of an
Olympic sprinter he should be making life a misery for
Premier League defences on a weekly basis.
The fact he isn't and that the amount of time he is
being given on the pitch is vastly reduced compared
to this time last season tells us that Babel is some
way off from being the player which so many people in
football believe he can be.
Babel first came to international prominence at the
European under-21 Championships which were held in his
native Holland in summer 2007.
Scouts drooled over his unerring ability to beat his
marker and his eye for a goal, and many observers marked
him out as the best player at the tournament by some
distance.
In the England ranks at that competition was Ashley
Young, who did not live up to Babel's exacting standards
despite doing a decent enough job for his country.
Roles have been reversed since then though, with Young
becoming one of the Premier League's most exciting players
while Babel has spent so much time on Liverpool's bench
that he will soon be carrying tweezers in his kit bag
in case of splinters.
It could be argued that Babel needs more playing time,
but that is difficult when Rafa Benitez is trying to
plot a title challenge with players he knows he can
rely on.
Babel is almost 22 but we still
don't know what he will produce from one game to the
next.
Will it be the player who terrorised
Arsenal after coming off the bench in a Champions League
quarter-final and the one who did the same against United
at Anfield a couple of months back?
Or will it be the one who offered nothing after coming
off the bench against Fulham last weekend and the one
who was ineffective at home to Portsmouth and anonymous
in Carling Cup ties against Spurs and Crewe?
His Liverpool career so far was actually summed up
in a single moment when Pompey visited Anfield. Babel
bamboozled his marker with the kind of trick that brings
crowds to their feet only to give the ball away with
his very next touch.
The potential was there but the end product wasn't.
A generation ago, Babel's struggles would have seen
him consigned to the reserves for a few months to iron
out the creases in his game.
But with second string football no longer viewed as
an ideal convalescence for out of touch senior stars,
he is going to have to prove his worth within the confines
of the first team set-up.
Babel is still more than capable of becoming a top
class player but he is certainly not making life easy
for himself.
And if he did tell Sportsweek that he has "shown
enough patience" at Anfield, someone should remind
him of the fact that his chances of holding down a starting
place in the side were diminished from the moment he
went to the Olympic Games with Holland at the same time
his club's Premier League campaign was getting underway.
Patience is a virtue and it is one which Liverpool
have afforded to Ryan Babel since he joined the club
two summers ago.
Now he is honour-bound to do the same for them.
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