Liverpool FC Forum

[bigmick]

it seems like we have had more  injuries so far this season which may have been forcing Rafa's hand and limiting his option and therefore rotations.  Its hard to tell what these #s would look like if he had the whole squad to pick from.

Oh and Bad Bob, Momo was not available for the Cardiff game because Rafa wanted to play him but he was sick

In fairness mate Bob has taken account of the injuries by quoting "unforced" changes, which after all is what the debate is all about. You can hardly play a bloke if he's genuinely injured when all said and done, even I wouldn't advocate that.

It's heartening though when you look at the figures to see we are belatedly moving towards a more settled line up. Hopefully the fairly obvious alteration to the policy has come in time for us to get something going. I actually think there are encouraging signs at the moment, and if we stick to the current ratio of changes (around 1.5 per game on average), it would take a very devout anti-rotationalist indeed to have too much quibble with that.

[account deleted by request]

it seems like we have had more  injuries so far this season which may have been forcing Rafa's hand and limiting his option and therefore rotations.  Its hard to tell what these #s would look like if he had the whole squad to pick from.

Oh and Bad Bob, Momo was not available for the Cardiff game because Rafa wanted to play him but he was sick

In fairness mate Bob has taken account of the injuries by quoting "unforced" changes, which after all is what the debate is all about. You can hardly play a bloke if he's genuinely injured when all said and done, even I wouldn't advocate that.

It's heartening though when you look at the figures to see we are belatedly moving towards a more settled line up. Hopefully the fairly obvious alteration to the policy has come in time for us to get something going. I actually think there are encouraging signs at the moment, and if we stick to the current ratio of changes (around 1.5 per game on average), it would take a very devout anti-rotationalist indeed to have too much quibble with that.

I think what Joe is saying is once we have everyone fit again, Rafa will have all his options open again and the rotation bandwaggon will roll on unchecked. ie recently he has had no real option but to play Mascherano as Sissoko and Alonso were ill/injured, with only Lucas available..

[Judge]

weve had last two games with no changes

close this pointless thread

[bigmick]

I think what Joe is saying is once we have everyone fit again, Rafa will have all his options open again and the rotation bandwaggon will roll on unchecked. ie recently he has had no real option but to play Mascherano as Sissoko and Alonso were ill/injured, with only Lucas available..

Cheers saint I've just re-read Joe's post and you're quite right. Sorry Joe I misunderstood what you meant, though God only knows how it was perfectly clear.

As for Judgie, this for you mate is a foruminal issue  ie you should be in general chat not making mischief in here.

I should also add of course that I really do hope that injuries aren't the reason for the reduction in the number of rotations, but even if they are I hope that rafa is sufficiently convinced to stick to at least the level of continuity he is currently allowing, and hopefully even a little more.

[66-1112520797]

or about his sunglasses

   

No wonder you Spanish havent been in any recent wars, you cant even throw an insult, let or lone a punch.

You pi$$ed me off with your sarky comment a few pages back, so I retaliated big head.

[Judge]

I think what Joe is saying is once we have everyone fit again, Rafa will have all his options open again and the rotation bandwaggon will roll on unchecked. ie recently he has had no real option but to play Mascherano as Sissoko and Alonso were ill/injured, with only Lucas available..

Cheers saint I've just re-read Joe's post and you're quite right. Sorry Joe I misunderstood what you meant, though God only knows how it was perfectly clear.

As for Judgie, this for you mate is a foruminal issue  ie you should be in general chat not making mischief in here.

I should also add of course that I really do hope that injuries aren't the reason for the reduction in the number of rotations, but even if they are I hope that rafa is sufficiently convinced to stick to at least the level of continuity he is currently allowing, and hopefully even a little more.

foruminal issue ?  

   

[SuperScouser]

[Sabre]

Simple lack of anticipation or unfamiliarity? Would the players have more or less chance of reading such flicks, heels and dummies if they played together more often?

If in doubt, once he's fit again watch the initially much-maligned Rooney partnership with Tevez. It's all step overs, dummies, flicks, anticipation, one taking up the space the other has created etc etc and it's an absolute nightmare to defend against. When it's being crossed from the left, watch Ronney and/or Tevez track towards the ball to make a hole for Ronaldo, or when Scholes is arriving into the box how the strikers split to make a landing pad for him, taking markers away. Watch how when Fabregas does it for Arsenal, Adebayor tacks out of the way, or Drogba for Chelsea when Lampard bombs on. How many times this season has Gerrard arrived in the box like a wardrobe down a flight of stairs only to find one of the strikers taking it off his shooting foot, or one of their markers moving in from two yards away to get a block in?

I snip the introduction and some parts of your post Bigmick, I want to comment some of this interesting points.

I agree that there may be unfamiliarity in some of the movements that have been done, like the one you mention of Torres or the interesting and true point about some of Gerrard's approaches to the box.

IMHO, that has to do with Torres still getting into the team. I won't deny that thorught out history there have been "connections" between great players that since they played together often, they knew exactly what his team mate was going to do, they played without thinking, automatically, and that's a good thing.

I'll grant you that the more games Torres plays with us and the sooner he does, the sooner the team will be adapted to him and thus, rotation at the beginning might hinder a bit his adaptation.

But once the adaptation is done, you truly can rest him in a game and this familiarity won't be lost. Kewell won't have to readapt after a long absence in the team, he'll have to regain form and matches in his pocket no doubt, but his movements won't be strange for the rest of the team, they know him already.

The unaccuracies in movements you have spotted (and so have I to be honest) are there, but not sure whatsoever the rotation is the culprit. A player like Luis Garcia will always send passes that are going to be understood by himself and the people who are in his wavelenght (sometimes himself only). The lack of coordination you spot might be a mistake of decission of the player, a mistake in the preparation of games of Rafa, or may have another explanation, but I'm not so sure this subtle details are due to rotation.

The great chance Kuyt and Gerrard failed against Blackburn was a mixture of bad movement of Gerrard (he moved to the first post instead of the far post) and an undecission of Kuyt who doubted what to do inside the box. In that case confidence and anxiety were my culprits. Should Kuyt have scored in previous games, probably he would have scored himself. I'm not sure that rotation had to do anything with that kind of mistakes, but of course, I can't prove anything.


As for the Rafa quotes that LFC2007 brings, I laughed quite a lot. I think they must be taken with a pinch of salt. Basically he's telling the press he won't change his policies, and in the process he mocks a bit the press. Note that, he speaks of competition in the squad. Which implies that if a players performs well, he will compete well, and thus he'll play more often. So quite simply Rafa won't leave Torres in the bench if he's playing well and he's needed.

Now, if we can't line up a starting eleven that can't beat the likes of Birmingham and Fulham at home without Torres, then we have a problem. Because a winner team cannot be Torres-dependant, nor Rooney-dependant for that matter.

The purpose of this quotes as always is to encourage the players who are not key in the squad. As always he doesn't praise Torres nor Gerrard, nor any of our key players, he'll always want more of them. If they bring very good, he'll ask for perfect. I don't have a problem with this quotes of Rafa, nor I think we'll be in trouble.

[skatesy]

Thanks for that Bob. Well it's fairly clear on first look that the Carling Cup game aside, we are seeing a drastic reduction in unforced rotations from the manager in the last five or six matches. By my reckoning, discounting the Cardiff game, we've made nine changes to the team in six matches since the last International break. This compares to 44 changes in the previous 12 games before that particular break (once again discounting the Carling cup game, this time against Reading).

So the calculator says we are changing an average of 1.5 players a match now, as against 3.67 previously. It's a huge difference and is about as near as you are going to get to a realisation and admission from the manager that we are really going to have to pick somewhere near our strongest team in nearly every game if we are going to prosper. The slightly annoying thing is that this pattern is exactly the same as in previous seasons, where it seems we have to prove once again that mass rotation won't work before we resort to tried and trusted methods (over here anyway). Those of us who bemoaned the over rotation at the start of the season are belatedly getting our wish, but it would be nice if just for once we didn't rotate "rafa style" at the start of the season.

One good consideration to think about as well is that at the start of the season there were definitely a lot of new players in the squad. For the most part, there was not a lot of opportunity for the team to play together. And, what may be likely, is that over the past 3 months the evidence of who should be playing in each position is become more and more cogent which may be a justifiable reason as to why the amount of rotations has gone down.

[bigmick]

I note that last night, contrary to my claim that they are now starting to rotate heavily (it must just be in the Champions League now they've already qualified) Arsenal continued with the policy of a settled eleven. I think (although I might be wrong) that the team which played at Reading was the same one which played us.

It'll be very interesting to see if later in the season they pay the price for not rotating the team hardly at all. I guess as half of our team has been injured it will be hard to judge what the effect of our heavy early season rotation has had on our fitness levels, but in Arsenals case it will be very interesting. My money is on them not being out on their feet during games as the season drags on, but we shall see.

[Kharhaz]

I note that last night, contrary to my claim that they are now starting to rotate heavily (it must just be in the Champions League now they've already qualified) Arsenal continued with the policy of a settled eleven. I think (although I might be wrong) that the team which played at Reading was the same one which played us.

It'll be very interesting to see if later in the season they pay the price for not rotating the team hardly at all. I guess as half of our team has been injured it will be hard to judge what the effect of our heavy early season rotation has had on our fitness levels, but in Arsenals case it will be very interesting. My money is on them not being out on their feet during games as the season drags on, but we shall see.

And thus raising questions as to why rafa rotates. Arsenal are top because they have had a settled side, the players have had a chance to train and play in match games where they have got used to each others style. They havent suffered from injurys, im not using this as an excuse lets not forget, during 2005 we had injurys left right and center but still managed to win the european cup. When Arsenal have switched players around they have looked poor so when they do get injurys they will suffer.

[taff]

I note that last night, contrary to my claim that they are now starting to rotate heavily (it must just be in the Champions League now they've already qualified) Arsenal continued with the policy of a settled eleven. I think (although I might be wrong) that the team which played at Reading was the same one which played us.

It'll be very interesting to see if later in the season they pay the price for not rotating the team hardly at all. I guess as half of our team has been injured it will be hard to judge what the effect of our heavy early season rotation has had on our fitness levels, but in Arsenals case it will be very interesting. My money is on them not being out on their feet during games as the season drags on, but we shall see.

Is this the same Arsenal where this time last year Henry was in all the papers suffering from exhaustion.  An Arsenal where European competition just looked like a game too far.

It seems like nobody has got it right so far on all possibilities,  apart from and it breaks my heart, the mancs in 99.  Is this the same Ferguson who had FOUR yes FOUR strikers because he needed to rotate due to the amount of games.  Very controversial at the time.

[Bad Bob]

Meant to post this t'other day when I updated the line-ups to date but you know how things go...

Anyway, here's our season so far broken down into three parts, with the international breaks acting as the dividing lines as follows:

Phase A = start of the season until the 1st international break
Phase B = Pompey match until the 2nd international break
Phase C = Everton match until the 3rd international break

Note that these numbers are based on all competitions and that I've reset everything to zero after each international break.  That is to say that I didn't count the number of changes made between the last game before a break and the first game after a break in the  "unforced changes" column (it hardly makes sense to compare teams across a fortnight-long divide).

          Played  Wins  Draws  Losses  Goal Diff.   Unforced Changes

Phase A    6        5        1         0       +14                  25

Phase B    7        2         4        1       +2                   29

Phase C    7        4         2         1       +11                 24


On the one hand, the numbers basically confirm what we already knew: we were a bit rubbish between the 1st and 2nd international breaks.  Yet, while we still struggled to find any kind of form after the 2nd break, the results did improve.

What's interesting though is the numbers associated with unforced changes.  They suggest that Rafa hasn't backed off from rotating quite as much as we may have thought.  Interesting?

[Sabre]

So it seems, it doesn't suggest only he hasn't backed off, but also that no matter which phase you pick the unforced changes are constant, no matter the injuries or the kind of competitions played, and there doesn't seem to be an especial "start of the season rotation madness" but quite a constant policy.

[stmichael]

The people on here seem to divided into 3 groups

1. Those who think Rafa is rotating just to be a "smartarse".

2. Those who think he does it because he wants his players to stay "fresh" for later stages of the season.

3. Those who think he does it because he wants his players to stay "fresh" and avoid injuries.

Personally, I'm in category three. I think it's pretty obvious that footballer's of today are put to higher physical demands than those of only 10-15 years ago. If you disagree, I suggest you take a look at some old vids, i.e before the back-pass rule . If games seem static and with low tempo today, it's normally because one of the teams does an enormous amount of running to prevent the opposition from playing. The stakes are higher, and a lot of teams are keeping risk to a minimum, therefore running themselves into the ground.

I have to say I'm amazed at the critisism Rafa receives for his approach to resting players. People can't see the reason behind resting someone to the extent of us losing contact with our rivals. It's October/November, players can't be tired already!! Yes, they can! Take Torres and Babel for example. A summer full of speculation (Torres) and (in Babel's case) important matches. They move to a new country, change their training regime and most likely their diet (although I know a lot of the Norwegian pros import products to avoid changing their habits. Gamst Pedersen even has bread flown to him from Tromsø every day:-)) and miss large parts of pre-season. Naturally they won't be fit enough to play every game in a league completely different from their own.

I'm no sports scientist, but I must say I find it interesting that so many footballers of today spend so much time on the sidelines. Given that all teams in the PL have a large backroom staff solely trying to keep players fit, you'd think the doctors and physios suck pretty hard at their jobs...

But it's all the bad tackles, some will say, that's why this and that player gets injured, it's just his style of play. I don't buy that. Some on here (for instance one or two talking about Arsenal yesterday) think that we should do like United do, and play our most important players every game (Torres, Gerrard). Like United do with Rooney you mean?

App Goals
43 17
48 19
55 23
12 7

Compare that to the numbers for Gerrard

43 13
53 23
49 11
17 6

and what do you know, Stevie's played 4 more games the last 4 seasons. How can that be, when Rafa has rested Stevie in several important games (especially European aways)? They have played exactly the same number of league games by the way... I'll let you in on a secret; Rooney has a really poor injury record for someone so young. And why is that? His style of play? Could be, but only one of the injuries he's had for the last few years has been directly inflicted by someone else (Gallas?). I'd say Alex' insistence on him playing (and the fact that they have no decent backup as Saha is injured constantly) all the games is a big factor in that. He's sluggish for 2-4 games (after being injured), very good/brilliant for 6-8 games, gets injured, struggles for 2-4 games and is very good/brilliant in 6-8 before he gets injured again. I don't think that's good management, especially as he's not able to give him rests against weaker opposition (hopefully we all agree that none of the outfield players are able to play to a good level 60+ games a season?).

I also think it's right to say that our captain (no matter how much criticism he receives on here, from myself included) has shown more stability and consistency than his Manc compatriot. The reason being Rooney having had to use games to build himself up after injuries. Michael Owen past Leeds hamstring injury anyone?

I'm certain our squad will benefit from Rafa's policy. I certainly think Rafa has overdone it from time to time, but I trust him to make the calls that will benefit the players health and subsequently our play and league position.

Thoughts?