by bigmick » Sun Aug 27, 2006 6:24 pm
I think resting players, rather than just plain rotation is where we should be going. Say we take it as a given that Kuyt and Bellamy are our first choice front two (I'm not saying they are, just for the sake of argument) then they should play in the majority of games. If we are then playing Wigan at Home then rest the two and play Fowler and Crouch. If Fowler scores twice, then keep him in on the saturday etc etc.
If Carragher and Hyypia are our first choice central defensive partnership, then rest Hyypia when we play Reading away etc etc.
If however we are just rotating three out of the back four for seemingly no reason then this is plain daft. At the moment the injuries have forced the rotations on the manager but I hope he remembers last season (and I've noticed that some posters on here have allowed themselves to become confused over this chain of events) where he rotated constantly in the first part of the season to extremely detrimental effect. He was seemingly then forced into playing his strongest team on a regular basis and the results improved dramatically.
It stands to reason that if two fully fit and fresh sides play against each other of absolutely equal ability, the one that has played together more often would win every time. Now if players are not fully fit and fresh then fair enough, but there should be a core of no less than eight players who are broadly regular participents in my view.
Ranieri was a lovely man and a good manager but he definately did change it too much. It in all probablity cost Chelsea a Champions League win, allowed Mourinho to call himself the "special one" and ultimately take Ranieri's job. Mourinho also lets his ego get the better of him and rotates to try and make himself look clever with sometimes disasterous results. Rafa I think needs to be careful he doesn't get tempted down the same road.
Last edited by
bigmick on Sun Aug 27, 2006 6:28 pm, edited 1 time in total.
"se e in una bottigla ed e bianco, e latte".