by bigmick » Thu May 14, 2009 12:27 pm
When I say "the figures" are kind of insignificant, I don't mean to pretend that it's not significant whether or not a team spends money. Bolton obviously cannot win the Premiership, it is a physical impossibility based on their budget. What I mean when the figures are insignificant is that we are in a select group of clubs who have a chance of winning it based on our transfer outlay and financial muscle. Now whether Ferguson is correct and we've spent more than Man U, or Rafa is correct and we haven't, or whether the transfer.net figures are correct or whether these figues are correct is IMHO insignificant. By pointing out that we have Gerrard for free, and that if Man Utd sell Ronaldo for a ridiculous fee it would skew the numbers I'm simply making the point that the numbers aren't the be all and end all. We spend enough to have an opportunity to win it, it is as simple as that in my view. Over the last couple of seasons, in my judgement we have spent probably heavier than anybody, although no doubt somebody will quote me figures which suggest otherwise. Whether or not we have spent the most by 10 million, or the Mancs have by 10 million matters not a jot though, we have shown we are capable of a challenge with our squad.
My pessimism on the chances of us improving significantly against the leagues lesser lights isn't because I'm saying spend is irrelevent either. I think it's quite likely we can beat Fulham at Home next season, as no doubt we will do our best to beat whoever replaces Hull in the Premiership once they're relegated, or we'll do our best not to lose away at another relegated club like Middlesboro. I think we can achieve that. My pessimism is based more around the feeling that things have kind of gone for us this year in many matches. We've pulled victory from the jaws of defeat on many occasions, we've had the bounce of the ball by and large through the season. Now I know for certain when I say that that someone will say we've hit the post 26 times, or we've missed lots of chances and been denied a host of clear cut penalties, which is all well and good but we'll have to differ. I think this season at many a crucial moment things have fallen for us, we've had a good run of things. With a different bounce of the ball for instance we could easily have lost a few games at the start of the season, and I just think if we sail as close to the wind next time we'll get burned.
Leaving that aside for a second, I note that the rotation debate is begining to go down a familiar path. Aplogies to those who are veterens of the rotation thread, but I feel I must just define my position on it once more. Nobody is saying you should/can/would like to play the same team in every single game. When I say "by and large" we have played our stromgest available team, I mean we have "by and large" done so. Of course there has been some rotation as the season has dragged on, and of course other teams employ it as well. Teams always have changed the team fromk time to time. They used to call it resting players, and before that dropping them. Nobody to the best of my knowledge has a problem with it. The problem comes when you adjust the players, the positions they play in and the formation to such an extent that the whole thing gets dizzy. On the forum the phenomenon became known as "Rafa style", whereby we were changing five and six players and positions per match. That is the issue, and it makes little or no difference if you have stronger players to make dizzy, footballers once dizzy run the risk of not winning as many football matches as they should.
Now once a team has a juggernaught rolling, like us or the Mancs unfortunately at the moment, you can make changes and it kind of seems to work. When though you are chopping and changing willy nilly and the team has no rhythm, no cohesion, no fluency nor any pattern, you simply stumble from one inept performance to the next. Anyway, the debates been done to death and the proof of the pudding really has been in the eating so there seems little point in going over it all now. I suppose there are still one or two people left who think we didn't used to overdo it at least a bit, but they seem to keep their thoughts to themselves these days.
I am always slightly baffled by the view that we simply didn't have good enough players to allow it to work. I don't necessarily disagree with that, but I'm bound to ask then if we didn't/don't have the players to allow uber-styling to work, why do it then? It seems akin to knocking high ball after high ball upto a five foot striker all season then afterwards saying "ah well, it would've worked if we had Crouch". Maybe it would, but if you haven't got Crouch don't pretend that you have surely? If you haven't got adequate cover to make 75 changes to the first team in the first 15 games of the season, then my answer would be not to do it then.
It's also worth noting that as many people are alluding to the number of changes Man Utd are making to their team, they are in a slightly different situation to us. They have played many more matches than us have already won the Carling Cup, went around the World to compete in that World thing, and have a Champions League final to take into account. We on the other hand had absolutely no need for any delayed gazelle thinking earlier in the season, as we've had only sporadic games for quite a bit now.
All in all it's an interesting debate which has and will always rumble on. The thing which this season IMHO has been proven beyond any shadow a doubt where we are concerned, is that consistency of selection breeds consistency of performance. Whoever would have thought it.
"se e in una bottigla ed e bianco, e latte".
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with the opposition's thoughts and tactics.
