I seem to recall reading here last October/November time that the reason at that stage why Rafa wasn't playing Aqualini was not because he hadn'd sufficiently recovered from injury but simply that he no longer rated or trusted him any more, based on what he had seen of him in training. It may have been from Redshrek or someone else who occasionally gets in the know information. At the time though, it was dismissed out of hand as paranoid conjecture, but perhaps it was in fact more acurate than we thought.
Roy has started him in a number of preseason games, where Aqualini passed up on the opportunity to shine despite having the potential to be the best player on the pitch. Based on what Hodgson has seen of Aqualini both in training and in those preseason matches, which is a lot more than any of us internet posters has seen, he doesn't appear to trust him to make the desired impact at the club this season.
While there is undoubtly a smashing player trying to get out I still have my doubts that Aqualini will ever be a star in the Premiership. For every decent performance he put in, he put in as many bad ones. He was truely shocking in the match against Bolton last January. At that match I got the impression that the pace and the power of the league was just too much for him. He wasn't always getting the time on the ball he wanted and he looked to get rid of the ball quicker that he needed/wanted to in order to avoid being tackled.
All of this could in time and matches played be remedied. He could grow more confident in his injury prone body's ability to cope with the physical nature of the premiership. He could in time adjust to the pace of the league. Unfortunately he seemed to be only adjusting marginally and slowly in the limited time he got to play last season. This season we don't have the luxury of slowly trying to bed a player in. All of our new players really need to hit the ground running.
After all of that though, he does have the potential to come in and do a job for us on occasion and he is at least a squad filler. Like with Babel, who is even more frustrating, I will be dissapointed if he is not replaced, even by a loan signing, who can contribute significently to the squad depth.
