by dum1 » Wed Oct 26, 2005 12:13 pm
The premiership is not won by new and different strategies or by rotating players, particularly if you are not Chelsea and by all means introduce new players but bring them in around a solid core of proven and tested players. Again I fear from the reaction of Raf after the game he was in shock and his plan had back-fired on him, and how could he blame his players when he had made the greatest blunder himself.
Trophies are won on the back of players that play as a team, consistent partnerships and combinations and players who have confidence in each other and who know how to play with each other.
I feel that Rafa needs to just start playing his best eleven and create some confidence and consistency before he starts his tactical rotations. I do not see a team out there, all I see is a collection of well meaning individual players, trying their best but not being able to play with each other.
Crouch, Morientes, Cisse and Kewell, who have now all appeared in one combination or another, but all look totally lost in each others company. Alonso and Gerrard look as un-comfortable for Liverpool as Lampard and Gerrard do for England. Sissoko has not settled on a proper role yet and uses such a wide brush that his most effective contribution is the fact that he put's himself about, he needs more focus and discipline to play the Hamann role. Zenden and Riise are jockeying for the same job and somehow we need to extract the best out of both to make one complete player. Garcia remains our most potent enigma, so excitingly imaginative and creative but also so wasteful at times and der I say a latin temperament.
Rafa has a major task on making that lot gel and he needs to give them a chance and not constantly making wholesale changes.
The defence needs to be locked at Warnock, Big Sam, Carra and Finnan, while Rafa concentrates on developing his best combo's further forward. Crouch needs to become stronger in the challenge and hopefully he will win more ball in the air than he does at present. My guess is that presently it's less than 50% and he hasn't even developed the professional foul yet that convinces referees, it just looks so obvious when he does it (and perhaps Garcia could coach him). Unless he get stronger in one- on- ones then I think he's gonna fade away and perhaps Raf will explain some day whether he sees him as an out and out goalscorer or someone who is providing a service to others. I see more of the latter than the former and while I can't fault his commitment it aint good enough on its own.
I think there is more blame being laid at Rafa's door than the players so is he gonna be man enough to admit this and more importantly do something about it?
