Liverpool FC Forum

[bigmick]

Well it's a pity that some of you havent got LFC tv because i watched Rafa's seaeon review last night . It's very insightful actually and it gives more of an explanation into rafa's thinking during the season . Why he did certain things at certain times . Why we lost the league and so on . It's actually from the horses mouth and not just a theory as to why like we've been doing .

Anyway the gist of it was and i quote Rafa here " I completely agree with igor no, we had to many draws at home and couldn't capitalize on our superiority during games against the lesser sides. Bigmick and saint and ace are all sightly gay for bashing me . They know i'm always right and when we win the league i inseeeeeest that they get "in rafa i trust " tattooed on there botties " No .

Cheeky monkey, I have been defending him for a change !

Only joking lash . It was good though , and some of his thoughts on the games we drew and where we lost the title and his rant was pretty interesting stuff .

Did he mention mountain climbing? If he didn't he obviously doesn't know what he's talking about 

What about mountain climbing S@int, you mean the "Gurkha theory" or the "basecamp theory"? 

[bigmick]

On a serious not though, i am absolutely convinced that if we had last season all over again with identical circumstances, we would win the league. People may say it's because of the "basecamp" theory and because the players are more used to handling the pressure and they may be right. My strong feeling is though that the principal reason we would prevail is because Rafa would do some things differently. Of course we'll never know because we will never have identical circumstances, but nobody will ever convince me that the title wasn't there for us to win last season.

[account deleted by request]

i

Well it's a pity that some of you havent got LFC tv because i watched Rafa's seaeon review last night . It's very insightful actually and it gives more of an explanation into rafa's thinking during the season . Why he did certain things at certain times . Why we lost the league and so on . It's actually from the horses mouth and not just a theory as to why like we've been doing .

Anyway the gist of it was and i quote Rafa here " I completely agree with igor no, we had to many draws at home and couldn't capitalize on our superiority during games against the lesser sides. Bigmick and saint and ace are all sightly gay for bashing me . They know i'm always right and when we win the league i inseeeeeest that they get "in rafa i trust " tattooed on there botties " No .

Cheeky monkey, I have been defending him for a change !

Only joking lash . It was good though , and some of his thoughts on the games we drew and where we lost the title and his rant was pretty interesting stuff .

Did he mention mountain climbing? If he didn't he obviously doesn't know what he's talking about 

What about mountain climbing S@int, you mean the "Gurkha theory" or the "basecamp theory"? 

I was meaning my theory that they looked down and realised how high they had climbed , but it fits in nicely with your theories too mate 

[aCe']

Well it's a pity that some of you havent got LFC tv because i watched Rafa's seaeon review last night . It's very insightful actually and it gives more of an explanation into rafa's thinking during the season . Why he did certain things at certain times . Why we lost the league and so on . It's actually from the horses mouth and not just a theory as to why like we've been doing .

Anyway the gist of it was and i quote Rafa here " I completely agree with igor no, we had to many draws at home and couldn't capitalize on our superiority during games against the lesser sides. Bigmick and saint and ace are all sightly gay for bashing me . They know i'm always right and when we win the league i inseeeeeest that they get "in rafa i trust " tattooed on there botties " No .

to be honest though, the way we ended the season was nothing short of brilliant... 11 games with 10 wins and a 4-4 draw with Arsenal... scoring 24 goals in the process... just goes to show that if things are done right this team could potentially turn out unstoppable.. If we start next season like we ended last season i have no doubt that we'll be considered clear favorites early on...
My only problem with Rafa is that he never seems to learn from his mistakes, we go on a good run, then he feels the need to change things around for reasons unknown to us mere mortals.. I'll tell you one thing though, even with all the draws and fck ups (mid december till end of Feb was a major fck up imo) from last season, the guy did well overall to show that with minor tweaks, the team is ready to go out and win the league...
in terms of personnel, formation, approach to big games..etc etc we're within touching distance imo...
if we keep it up, nevermind improve, i think we should be considered favourites to win the league this season...

[bigmick]

i

Well it's a pity that some of you havent got LFC tv because i watched Rafa's seaeon review last night . It's very insightful actually and it gives more of an explanation into rafa's thinking during the season . Why he did certain things at certain times . Why we lost the league and so on . It's actually from the horses mouth and not just a theory as to why like we've been doing .

Anyway the gist of it was and i quote Rafa here " I completely agree with igor no, we had to many draws at home and couldn't capitalize on our superiority during games against the lesser sides. Bigmick and saint and ace are all sightly gay for bashing me . They know i'm always right and when we win the league i inseeeeeest that they get "in rafa i trust " tattooed on there botties " No .

Cheeky monkey, I have been defending him for a change !

Only joking lash . It was good though , and some of his thoughts on the games we drew and where we lost the title and his rant was pretty interesting stuff .

Did he mention mountain climbing? If he didn't he obviously doesn't know what he's talking about 

What about mountain climbing S@int, you mean the "Gurkha theory" or the "basecamp theory"? 

I was meaning my theory that they looked down and realised how high they had climbed , but it fits in nicely with your theories too mate 

Ah you mean the "acrophobia" theory mate  . Sometimes people mistakenly refer to it as the "vertigo" theory, which really is more akin to a spinning sensation according to Wikipedia. More of a rotational thing than a hieght one.

[Bad Bob]

On a serious not though, i am absolutely convinced that if we had last season all over again with identical circumstances, we would win the league. People may say it's because of the "basecamp" theory and because the players are more used to handling the pressure and they may be right. My strong feeling is though that the principal reason we would prevail is because Rafa would do some things differently. Of course we'll never know because we will never have identical circumstances, but nobody will ever convince me that the title wasn't there for us to win last season.

I think Rafa doing some things differently IS PART OF the basecamp theory, Mick.  Part of what mounting a proper title challenge and coming very close to winning it does is provide greater clarity about where improvements are needed.  Rafa, will now have a much clearer sense of what we need to do for having come so close.  His quotes about 'perfection' highlight that.  I think we've seen evidence of it during the run in last season as well.  Too many draws against lesser teams had cost us the lead in the title race and we responded by going a little more 'full throttle' in matches (which paid dividends).  So, being in the crucible of a title challenge means you learn your lessons that much more sharply than you might otherwise do.  That's why I think we were ALWAYS going to come up a bit short unless the Mancs completely imploded.  Favourable conditions or not, we needed the experience of a title race first before we could realistically expect to win the thing.

[Bad Bob]

Well it's a pity that some of you havent got LFC tv because i watched Rafa's seaeon review last night . It's very insightful actually and it gives more of an explanation into rafa's thinking during the season . Why he did certain things at certain times . Why we lost the league and so on . It's actually from the horses mouth and not just a theory as to why like we've been doing .

Anyway the gist of it was and i quote Rafa here " I completely agree with igor no, we had to many draws at home and couldn't capitalize on our superiority during games against the lesser sides. Bigmick and saint and ace are all sightly gay for bashing me . They know i'm always right and when we win the league i inseeeeeest that they get "in rafa i trust " tattooed on there botties " No .

to be honest though, the way we ended the season was nothing short of brilliant... 11 games with 10 wins and a 4-4 draw with Arsenal... scoring 24 goals in the process... just goes to show that if things are done right this team could potentially turn out unstoppable.. If we start next season like we ended last season i have no doubt that we'll be considered clear favorites early on...
My only problem with Rafa is that he never seems to learn from his mistakes, we go on a good run, then he feels the need to change things around for reasons unknown to us mere mortals.. I'll tell you one thing though, even with all the draws and fck ups (mid december till end of Feb was a major fck up imo) from last season, the guy did well overall to show that with minor tweaks, the team is ready to go out and win the league...
in terms of personnel, formation, approach to big games..etc etc we're within touching distance imo...
if we keep it up, nevermind improve, i think we should be considered favourites to win the league this season...

One of your more bizarre posts, this, aCe'.  'Rafa never learns from his mistakes' yet he had the wherewithal to make a few 'minor tweaks' to make the team 'nothing short of brilliant' and 'potentially unstoppable' down the stretch? 

As for all the 'draws and fck ups', weren't the draws the thing that everyone agreed derailed the title hunt so what exactly were these additional 'fck ups'?  And were they really, truly 'fck ups' if they required only 'minor tweaks' to correct?

Look, I think you're getting a bit carried away here (as Mick also does when he talks about 'spunking' the title).  At the very top of the table in the heat of a title race against a side that's been there, done that more than a few times before, we're talking about very fine margins between success and failure.  We didn't 'fck up royally' or 'spunk away' the title last season, IMHO.  Rather, we had an untimely dip in form and a resulting loss of confidence that saw too many draws instead of victories.  A drop in concentration here, a failure to kill the game there and we got punished for it.  Such is football in the rarified air at the top of the table: where fine margins separate the eventual champions from other excellent teams playing excellent football.

[bigmick]

Look, I think you're getting a bit carried away here (as Mick also does when he talks about 'spunking' the title). 

In fairness Bob although I have been critical in the past about the circumstances surrounding our not winning it (and I may even have used those words ) that's not really the point of the thread and I've refrained from such language upon it.

I guess the most frustrating thing from my point of view is that the things we did wrong (mixed in obviously with many things we did right) were fairly obvious, and IMHO we could have avoided them. Now I know many posters on here failed to see the danger of Man Utd getting the old juggernaught going and squashing us flat until they'd actually done it, but I'd have expected the teams management to be aware of what could happen if we didn't keep going all out for wins.

Some people were talking after 18 games or so of the fact that the Mancs had already played ALL of the previous seasons top 10 Away. Like I say, although we got shouted down on here when we said it was quite conceiveable that the Mancs could go on an elongated winning run, and settling for a point at the Emirates given the circumstances was madness, I'd expect the management to know better.

I don't really see it that you have to be in the thick of things for a season before you realise such a fundamentally obvious concept. It's hardly the first time the Mancs have won lots of games consecutively, and as I said previously it's hardly the first time that wins as opposed to draws have been absolutely paramount. If Owzat can prove pretty much beyond dispute what a team should be looking to do in order to win the English Premier League, it just seems bizarre that the manager is harping back to his Valencia days when he won the title after drawing lots of matches.

Quite simply it hasn't happened in England for years, and we shouldn't IMHO have needed to prove something that was frankly already a given in order to know it for next time.

[aCe']

Well it's a pity that some of you havent got LFC tv because i watched Rafa's seaeon review last night . It's very insightful actually and it gives more of an explanation into rafa's thinking during the season . Why he did certain things at certain times . Why we lost the league and so on . It's actually from the horses mouth and not just a theory as to why like we've been doing .

Anyway the gist of it was and i quote Rafa here " I completely agree with igor no, we had to many draws at home and couldn't capitalize on our superiority during games against the lesser sides. Bigmick and saint and ace are all sightly gay for bashing me . They know i'm always right and when we win the league i inseeeeeest that they get "in rafa i trust " tattooed on there botties " No .

to be honest though, the way we ended the season was nothing short of brilliant... 11 games with 10 wins and a 4-4 draw with Arsenal... scoring 24 goals in the process... just goes to show that if things are done right this team could potentially turn out unstoppable.. If we start next season like we ended last season i have no doubt that we'll be considered clear favorites early on...
My only problem with Rafa is that he never seems to learn from his mistakes, we go on a good run, then he feels the need to change things around for reasons unknown to us mere mortals.. I'll tell you one thing though, even with all the draws and fck ups (mid december till end of Feb was a major fck up imo) from last season, the guy did well overall to show that with minor tweaks, the team is ready to go out and win the league...
in terms of personnel, formation, approach to big games..etc etc we're within touching distance imo...
if we keep it up, nevermind improve, i think we should be considered favourites to win the league this season...

One of your more bizarre posts, this, aCe'.  'Rafa never learns from his mistakes' yet he had the wherewithal to make a few 'minor tweaks' to make the team 'nothing short of brilliant' and 'potentially unstoppable' down the stretch? 

As for all the 'draws and fck ups', weren't the draws the thing that everyone agreed derailed the title hunt so what exactly were these additional 'fck ups'?  And were they really, truly 'fck ups' if they required only 'minor tweaks' to correct?

Look, I think you're getting a bit carried away here (as Mick also does when he talks about 'spunking' the title).  At the very top of the table in the heat of a title race against a side that's been there, done that more than a few times before, we're talking about very fine margins between success and failure.  We didn't 'fck up royally' or 'spunk away' the title last season, IMHO.  Rather, we had an untimely dip in form and a resulting loss of confidence that saw too many draws instead of victories.  A drop in concentration here, a failure to kill the game there and we got punished for it.  Such is football in the rarified air at the top of the table: where fine margins separate the eventual champions from other excellent teams playing excellent football.

Rafa never learns from his mistakes is more a habit thing than a criticism specific to last seasons campaign Bob... Its not just the results i was talking about but we'll leave that to a relevant thread... my point was that every time we seem to be going in the right direction something seems to go wrong that takes us back a few steps .. In last season's case it was more to do with the transfer dealings (yet again) and the media handling...
Again, december till February, quite a few things were going wrong for us not only on the pitch but also off the pitch.. many will say that the Keane thing didnt affect our performances much last season -and maybe it didnt towards the end of the season- but to me its hard to look past the fact that the title was lost in the period where all the Keane treatment and subsequent exit talk was at full throttle.. Same with the 'Rafa rant' thing... 7 games after that we manage 2 wins... not good enough.. whether its relevant or not cant be determined for certain but safe to say you have your take on things, and i have mine..
hope this clears up the 'additional fck ups' part..

anyways its all behind us now... looking onto the new season i think we have another opportunity as many pointed out... the way i see it, if we can get a good start to the season (similar to that we had last season) then we could very well end up winning it... safe to say no matter how bad Johnson turns out to be we wont be letting him go January (ill just say that i expect him to be a good player for us before Mick goes on another tantrum    ) so we should pretty much know what to expect from the players we have now... if we can approach games with the right mentality then we can just about make it because we have a squad capable of doing so... All comes down to how Rafa handles certain situations next season... If its the Rafa that ended last season playing attacking football and sticking to sensible team selections and such, then its all good and i have no doubt we'll go even closer if we dont win it... if its the Rafa whos more concerned with proving a point about a player or complaining about refs and the FA then im not so sure...

[Bad Bob]

Look, I think you're getting a bit carried away here (as Mick also does when he talks about 'spunking' the title). 

In fairness Bob although I have been critical in the past about the circumstances surrounding our not winning it (and I may even have used those words ) that's not really the point of the thread and I've refrained from such language upon it.

I guess the most frustrating thing from my point of view is that the things we did wrong (mixed in obviously with many things we did right) were fairly obvious, and IMHO we could have avoided them. Now I know many posters on here failed to see the danger of Man Utd getting the old juggernaught going and squashing us flat until they'd actually done it, but I'd have expected the teams management to be aware of what could happen if we didn't keep going all out for wins.

Some people were talking after 18 games or so of the fact that the Mancs had already played ALL of the previous seasons top 10 Away. Like I say, although we got shouted down on here when we said it was quite conceiveable that the Mancs could go on an elongated winning run, and settling for a point at the Emirates given the circumstances was madness, I'd expect the management to know better.

I don't really see it that you have to be in the thick of things for a season before you realise such a fundamentally obvious concept. It's hardly the first time the Mancs have won lots of games consecutively, and as I said previously it's hardly the first time that wins as opposed to draws have been absolutely paramount. If Owzat can prove pretty much beyond dispute what a team should be looking to do in order to win the English Premier League, it just seems bizarre that the manager is harping back to his Valencia days when he won the title after drawing lots of matches.

Quite simply it hasn't happened in England for years, and we shouldn't IMHO have needed to prove something that was frankly already a given in order to know it for next time.

Mick, I doubt there were many on here (and none at the club) who didn't expect the Mancs would get back on track and give the title chase a real push.  So, I don't think anyone missed the obvious.  As for going all out for wins, it's a bit more complicated than that, IMO.  You've noted two examples--Wigan and Arsenal--where we didn't do that and I agree with you that that was frustrating to see.  But, there were a number of other games where we were huffing and puffing mightily and still not scoring the goal(s) needed to turn a draw into a win.  Does that mean we weren't going all out for the win?  In other cases, we were winning and did something stupid to concede a late equalizer.  In the past, we've been VERY adept at hanging on to 1-0 wins so I don't think we can necessarily blame Rafa and the lads for trying to shut up shop rather than pressing for more goals.  Hell, even the Mancs have been known to sit on a 1-0 lead and Chelsea have made it an art form.  So, in a nutshell, this 'why didn't we go all out for those wins' issue is a bit more nuanced than it's often made out to be.

As for the point of the thread, I know mate: you wanted to preface things with some comments about last year's golden opportunity as a way of laying the foundations for discussion about the possibility of another one this year.  All well and good but for me (I won't speak for anyone else) we're still waiting to get a clear glimpse of how strong the respective squads of the expected title challengers will be.  Sure, the Mancs have lost Ronaldo and Tevez but who knows whether they're done signing players.  Meanwhile, we look likely to lose Alonso and no one knows whether we have a replacement lined up, whether the cash will be used to buy Silva etc.  With so much still up in the air I find it nigh on impossible to intelligently comment at this stage about whether we're looking at another golden opportunity this season.  So, apart from saying, 'sure, we might just be, mate' I don't know what else to say about that, which leaves picking the bones concerning last year's golden opportunity spunked.

[LFC2007]

We may have lost the initiative in the January period, but as we proved later on, it certainly wasn't game over. It was almost game over at times, so it seemed when we went 2-1 behind at Pompey, or when a 0-0 at Craven cottage appeared to be on the cards. It seemed a near certainty we'd blown it after the Boro game, yet afterward we went from 16/1 to 2/1 in the space of a few weeks - they're not odds that reflect a 'dead and buried' mood. I'm sure I wasn't the only one who watched Villa leading 2-0 after 70 odd minutes having bossed the Manc's off the park, thinking 'this could be the crucial turning point'.

No, we most certainly weren't out of it, the chance was a realistic and genuine one at that stage. There was a palpible sense that we were on their heels, they were faltering, we kept on and they kept sweating for results. As much was evident in the celebrations that followed Macheda's winner that day against Villa.

The draws earlier in the season lost us the initiative and in that sense cost us a very good opportunity to move well ahead of the pile, though I cannot accept that those results ultimately cost us the title. They were not insurmountable because as was later demonstrated, the final stages were tight and the final margins fine. Neither was it anything like assured that taking our chances in January would have caused us to win the title; we would have needed to maintain a lead for four months and that's the hardest challenge of all. It would've been a substantial unknown; obviously one more appealing than having to chase down for the same amount of time, but hard to foretell at any rate. The Manc's and Chelsea have shown resolve in the chase over the years, we haven't done anything like as much unfortunately, mainly because we haven't positioned ourselves to do so, but managing the pressure from the front was always going to be a stern test even if we had taken said opportunity. So I disagree with the degree of conviction expressed by the 'Ifithadntbeenforthemdraws' brigade.

Shifting the perspective forward, however, we can assess where we should realistically be able to improve, and that's where the point about the draws is particularly relevant. It's a problem we've faced for at least a couple of seasons and considering the low likelhood of repeating (or exceeding) our results against the other top four teams, the focus on putting it right sharpens.

We may have conceded the better opportunity in January, but what we did do is show a resolve we haven't seen before by creating for ourselves another realistic and genuine opportunity to win the title at a time when it really mattered - when things were on the verge of being decided.

[JC_81]

To be honest I don't find it particularly helpful or stimulating to discuss whether last season was a chance missed or not.  What we can't do at this stage (which Bob has already alluded to) is second guess how strong our rivals will be when it it notoriously difficult to predict how teams will be affected by certain incoming and outgoing players.  And of course the transfer window isn't even shut yet. 

A more helpful way to look at things is to analyse where we went wrong last season and how can we rectify those things this season.  So what can we improve on from last season?

1.  Personnel.  It was blatantly obvious we needed a backup striker as we were toothless without Torres for long spells.  We also lacked an attacking threat from full back (moreso on the right than the left) and could do with another creative/attacking midfielder, perhaps someone who starts wide left/right.  A case could also be made for a better centre half, someone who dominates in the air.

What have we done about this?  Voronin as back and so far it looks like he'll be the backup centre forward.  We've also given Nemeth and Pacheco runouts preseason and at least they're in Benitez's thoughts too.  But we haven't signed proven quality or someone who would guarantee 15 goals a season, which is perhaps what we need.  Johnson has replaced Arbeloa and will hopefully improve our attack from the right side.  Rather than improve the centre of defence we've weakened it by not replacing Hyypia and now have only 3 centre backs with any experience.  We have also not signed any attacking midfielders.  We may also lose our most influential midfielder from last season.

2.  Breaking teams down.  For me this is personnel rather than tactics related.  Yes the 1-1 Arsenal game springs to mind when we should have gone for the jugular, but other than that it was cutting edge and quality that was missing, not lack of intent to score.

3.  Injuries.  One of our problems last season.  However there isn't a great deal we can do about that other than keep a close eye on Torres especially.  Unfortuanately we couldn't prevent him playing the confederations cup, although to his credit Benitez did try.

4.  Leaking goals.  We didn't look as solid at the back last season, that's a fact.  Carra's best days are behind him and Skrtel hasn't had a good season.  Agger has had a few injuries too and his form suffered for that.  I do feel that with our more expansive style last season our defence was exposed more, but it's a trade off.  We conceded more goals but were top scorers in the country.  I think we'll still pick up more points playing this way and therefore tactically I wouldn't change things.  It comes back to personnel.  If we had Ferdinand and Vidic at the back we may have won the league last year.  We haven't done anything about this situation close season and have lost valuable cover in Sami.

5.  Experience.  Nothing we can do close season, but last season's title race will stand us in better stead this year for sure.

6.  Formation.  Once again we started the season 4-4-2 and finished it 4-4-1-1 with Gerrard/Torres flourishing as a partnership.  This has happened 2 seasons in a row.  We need to learn from this and not break up our most deadly weapon.  These two need to start up front from the start this season.


In summary my main concern is that we haven't improved the personnel enough this summer... but the transfer window's still open so perhaps too early to judge.  I think another attacking player is an absolute must.

[account deleted by request]

Excellent post John

[bigmick]

Yep, some excellent analysis by a couple of posters there.

[bigmick]

Just bumping it up as it's a good thread with some excellent posts, even a couple of mine are alright. There's the "golden opportunity" theory, the "basecamp theory" and talk of gurkhas and all sorts of b0ll0cks (and that's just in my posts). Anyways there was some interesting thoughts on how the season ought to pan out, and its worth having a quick look to compare and contrast where we actually are with there people thought we would be/ought to be.