Liverpool FC Forum

by **maypaxvobiscum** » Sun Sep 23, 2007 7:58 am

liverpool played badly
all clubs go through such stages
few weeks back everyone was talking bout a title
now....people are even suggesting to sack rafa
also, some say we were shocking last night. i didnt watch the match. but im curious....why is it most of the blame is being directed at the fact torres didnt play? is torres such a big deal? honestly, what if he gets injured are we gonna lose every game then? we have a bloody capable squad to begin with so if theres anybody to be blamed its the team. not entirely rafa. but also the team.

by **Rafa D** » Sun Sep 23, 2007 9:31 am

Not a happy bunny.

Not at all.

Listen you cannot play well week in, week out its impossible.

But you give yourself a better chance if you play your best eleven. No player needs a rest 6 weeks into a season, no one. Especially a 23 year old lad desperate to prove himself to the world at his first big club. Our major problem last season was scoring goals, to leave a 26 million pound striker on the bench for pompey and brum, 2 games we should be winning to me is just plain stubborn. He's done this before and he'll do it again.

Don't get me wrong that 11 that started should have been good enough to beat birmingham - but how the fuck are you gonna get a settled team by changing it every week???

One thing I'd love to ask Rafa is this. "Whats the point in having a fresh squad come march when your out of every competition???"

His team selection has cost us 4 points in the last two games and he will continue to cost us points untill he starts picking his best 11. Will he do this ?

I very much doubt it.

Oh yeah one other thing. If you want to rest torres why not start him and when were winning take him off after 60 mins?

?

Confused.

by **bigmick** » Sun Sep 23, 2007 9:34 am

Well people are understandably angry it seems, but things still aren't as bad as they look right now. We are still involved, and if we can rediscover something close to our best form, would be a match for anybody in the Premiership I am certain of it.

Going back to the rotation thing again, I still stand by my earlier statement that the selection for this game was largely sensible. I do however believe that the seeds for us not winning the game were probably sewn in our selected line-ups against Portsmouth and Porto, and possibly even prior to that. I did start a thread in the aftermath of the Derby game that I was beginning to get worried that some people(and especially Rafa obviously) may become carried away with the whole concept and start to believe that our "stronger squad this year" may mean that the idea of rotation might work. I have never for one minute believed that it would and Saturday demonstrated for me exactly why.

The team, and I say this again, he selected was fine. It appeared to have balance, there was nobody playing in a position which was foreign to them, and there was probably only one/maybe two at a push changes from our strongest available team (Torres obviously and Finnan slightly more debateably). And yet, most people would accept that we didn't play too well, so why? Well my point has always been and sorry for repeating myself, once you've slipped out of the groove as a football team you can't just slip back into it by picking the correct eleven, it takes time. Now we had Paul Tomkins's silly observations on the number of changes each of the top managers makes but I've always said it wasn't a numbers game out and out. That said, if one of the stats guys would be kind enough to dig out the numbers of changes from the first two matches where we picked the same team, through the next few matches both in Europe and at Home they might make interesting reading. You see eventually you arrive at a point where even if you return to some thing like your best eleven, the team has been disrupted completely out of its rhythm. Similarly with individual players. As Peter Crouch found to his cost last season, it is quite possible to be rotated out of form and with that in mind, we shouldn't be too surprised when Fernando Torres doesn't quite set the World alight when he comes back into the starting eleven, despite his "rest".

Those that are expecting him to leap around like a Gazelle and exude sharpness, as well as looking just as good as he did when full of confidence and verve a couple of weeks ago are probably in for a bit of a disappointment I fear.

by **redtrader74** » Sun Sep 23, 2007 9:37 am

The rsult of the Birmingham game was not a rotation issue, we played poorly. This was close to the best team we could have put out, bar Torres (WTF). My problem is Rafas thought processes behind the decision not to pick Torres, he said it was due to the way Birmingham would play, ie defend deep, men behind the ball.

IMHO this is Rafas weakness, i don't have a problem with his rotation of players for freshness and to reduce reliance on particular individuals, but to worry about mediocre cannon fodder such as Birmingham, AT HOME, is folly and not a characteristic of title winners. Also saying that Birmingham would defend deep, so what? which team won't when coming to Anfield? Even then, the team picked should still have won, but the mentality must be that we are at home, they are SH!T and we will steamroller them.

BTW calling for Rafas head is fickle and stupid, we along with manu are goint to be the only challengers for the league, Chelsea are going back to midtable, and Arsenal still lack depth, this is still our best chance in years to win the league, results like yesterday will afflict all the contenders.

by **The Grudge** » Sun Sep 23, 2007 9:55 am

FICKLE!!<<<<<<<<<<<I Fucin hate that word!

REALLY!

by **The Grudge** » Sun Sep 23, 2007 9:59 am

bigmick wrote:Well people are understandably angry it seems, but things still aren't as bad as they look right now. We are still involved, and if we can rediscover something close to our best form, would be a match for anybody in the Premiership I am certain of it.

Going back to the rotation thing again, I still stand by my earlier statement that the selection for this game was largely sensible. I do however believe that the seeds for us not winning the game were probably sewn in our selected line-ups against Portsmouth and Porto, and possibly even prior to that. I did start a thread in the aftermath of the Derby game that I was beginning to get worried that some people(and especially Rafa obviously) may become carried away with the whole concept and start to believe that our "stronger squad this year" may mean that the idea of rotation might work. I have never for one minute believed that it would and Saturday demonstrated for me exactly why.

The team, and I say this again, he selected was fine. It appeared to have balance, there was nobody playing in a position which was foreign to them, and there was probably only one/maybe two at a push changes from our strongest available team (Torres obviously and Finnan slightly more debateably). And yet, most people would accept that we didn't play too well, so why? Well my point has always been and sorry for repeating myself, once you've slipped out of the groove as a football team you can't just slip back into it by picking the correct eleven, it takes time. Now we had Paul Tomkins's silly observations on the number of changes each of the top managers makes but I've always said it wasn't a numbers game out and out. That said, if one of the stats guys would be kind enough to dig out the numbers of changes from the first two matches where we picked the same team, through the next few matches both in Europe and at Home they might make interesting reading. You see eventually you arrive at a point where even if you return to some thing like your best eleven, the team has been disrupted completely out of its rhythm. Similarly with individual players. As Peter Crouch found to his cost last season, it is quite possible to be rotated out of form and with that in mind, we shouldn't be too surprised when Fernando Torres doesn't quite set the World alight when he comes back into the starting eleven, despite his "rest".

Those that are expecting him to leap around like a Gazelle and exude sharpness, as well as looking just as good as he did when full of confidence and verve a couple of weeks ago are probably in for a bit of a disappointment I fear.

I tried to say that about Torres earlier!!I just began and ended...ITS SIMPLE......>TORRES MUST PLAY!

by **Red Dotty** » Sun Sep 23, 2007 10:02 am

bigmick wrote:Just a couple of things here and apologies to all for starting a new thread. Ther thing is though, a fair bit of this doesn't refer to the Birmingham game so I thought I'd go here and let everyone vent their anger in there.

I really think people need to calm down a bit with the "sack Rafa" nonsense. Equally the "we're not going to win the league" stuff is very premature, in my opinion anyway. It's on the back of a dodgy little spell admittedly, but we are still right in amongst it even if we have just about thrown away our really good start.

As for the rotation stuff, I thought the game against Birmingham threw up a couple of interesting points. Firstly, the team Rafa picked was pretty sensible when all said and done, and given the personel I would have expected us to win very comfortably against an awful Birmingham team (who will certainly finish in the bottom four in my view). I know many people would like to have seen Torres from the start, but make no mistake the team on this occasion was largely sensible. Those gunning for Rafa on this particular occasion are calling in wrong in my opinion.

So the taking stock stuff. Well clearly the defence is absolutely rock-solid at the moment and we have a platform there to launch a serious title challenge. We have (in my opinion anyway) the best goalkeeper in the League as well so we have two of the classic ingredients in place to have a real go at the title. As the song goes, we've got the best midfield in the World and we quite possibly have, while up top we have Torres who is probably World-Class plus three other decent strikers. Allied to that we have a young kid who could be anything but is taking his time to get going.

We're almost into October and we're still in with a chance of winning the League (which feels like an achievement in itself to be honest) and now is not the time to panic.

I'll conclude though with revisiting rotation (surprise surprise) and a reiteration that it is not a numbers game. I've always said that one performance leads to another for a football team, they are intrinsically linked. Pundits call it "form" and it therefore follows that those teams and individuals in good "form" can usually reproduce good performances without giving it too much thought, until someone or something knocks them out of their stride. It is precisely this reason which has made me consistently be an advocate for not disturbing the equilebrium of a team unless it is properly necessary. My hunch has always been that a football team at its best is a well-oiled machine, and if you take out one of the component parts and swap it for something similar don't be surprised that given time the machine starts to rattle a bit. One game leads into another.

Now whether or not you choose to believe in Rafa and his rotational revolution, few would argue that we don't look quite as fluent right now as we did at the start of the season. It might be the International break, it might be injuries, it might be tiredness and it might be the jetlag after the long haul flights from Albania. Whatever it is though, the fact that the fluency isn't there is beyond dispute. Now to get it back, we'll probably start playing our strongest team again for a bit. It might be an idea this time to take a bit of a gamble on the players being a bit "tired", and leave that team in place for a wee bit longer than we did last time.

Well said and at last someone with a calm approach :nod

by **maguskwt** » Sun Sep 23, 2007 10:06 am

Effes wrote:
maguskwt wrote:I can safely say rafa knows more than us which striker is good at what aspect of the game and he probably knows the weaknesses of torres which we might not have seen yet... so he made an educated decision... this is not tinkering... (the definition of tinkering is making unskilled and experimental decisions)

So applying that thesis...

Rafa looked at Birmingham at home and thought
"Hmm, this is not a game for Torres here. Birmingham will expose his weaknesses"
WTF!

So, Torres shouldn't play at home to all the other the "lesser" teams?
Rafa is not infallible you know.
N.B. You might want to look up "tinkering" in the dictionary.

I don't believe I need to respond to an over-exagerated response such as this... someone with a bit of common sense knows what i'm talking about

and I'm sure I don't need to look up "tinkering" in the dictionary... maybe you do...

Sorry Maguskwt I couldnt get past this part of your post.

Fair enough Bamaga man... collectively the team did not play well... but my opinion is that it wasn't a terrible performance like against Porto... it was more of the case of Birmingham carrying out to perfection their game plan... and us not having that extra step to penetrate their defences... with a bit of luck we could win those kind of games easily... man united drew against reading at home and lost against city... is it all doom and gloom for them then?

but this doesn't mean that Rafa should be blamed for tinkering in this game... it was collectively a bad performance and the players need to take up some responsibility for it...

by **kazza** » Sun Sep 23, 2007 10:08 am

Remember Torres has had an ankle injury since last year. In the game against Porto (it could be the game before) he rolled his ankle under a heavy challenge. All this talk of Torres should have played, well maybe he was not 100 percent fit. Fact is that the team playing should have won that game, Torres or not.

I hope we are not having a Paco leaving hangover as the players have looked a little flat last three games.

by **maguskwt** » Sun Sep 23, 2007 10:15 am

redtrader74 wrote:BTW calling for Rafas head is fickle and stupid, we along with manu are goint to be the only challengers for the league, Chelsea are going back to midtable, and Arsenal still lack depth, this is still our best chance in years to win the league, results like yesterday will afflict all the contenders.

I do believe that arsenal will be one of the teams besides us and man u to be challenging for the league. They've just opened a 4 pt gap on us and it seems like this is a break out year for fabegras and adebayor... But i do agree with you on chelsea that they will return to being a team full of stars which underachieves... a club that sacks one of the best managers in the game right now at the start of a season is not a club that will succeed...

by **Ciggy** » Sun Sep 23, 2007 10:25 am

I would be happy with draws if we cant beat them against the likes of Chelsea, Arsenal and Man U, but against Birmingham and Portsmouth its just not acceptable its not on.

It will be tough against the blueshite and Spurs, where I wouldnt be as angry with a point.

But you have to win your home games if you aim to win the league and not drop silly points, we could have beat Chelsea even after that pen, but we didnt I am absolutly furious at the players, and Rafa today.

How can we play fab attacking football the first few games in and then go stale, boring, predicatable the next 3 games after that?

I am baffled somethings not right I dont know if it has to do with Pako leaving, but he was here for the last three seasons when we have played the same broing predictable shite not being able to break down resolute teams that defend with 10 men behind the ball.

Another thing Babel is a striker he is a brilliant player playing for Holland absolutly world class, even at Ajax, but played out of position having to defend when thats not part of his game, is going to ruin him.

Same goes for Kuyt brilliant striker for Feyenoord over 20 goals a season playing in and around the box, now he is more of a midfielder his game isnt improving all huff and puff no end product.

Once again down to the manager playing these two alone out of their natural position.

by **Ciggy** » Sun Sep 23, 2007 10:28 am

maguskwt wrote:I do believe that arsenal will be one of the teams besides us and man u to be challenging for the league. They've just opened a 4 pt gap on us and it seems like this is a break out year for fabegras and adebayor... But i do agree with you on chelsea that they will return to being a team full of stars which underachieves... a club that sacks one of the best managers in the game right now at the start of a season is not a club that will succeed...

One thing to our advantage is the African Nations when probably the whole Arsenal team will be missing

And Chelsea will have a few missing.

by **Ciggy** » Sun Sep 23, 2007 10:49 am

Also the spine of our team should be Reina, Carra, Agger, Gerrard, Alonso, Mascherano, Torres.
Fit the others in around them not drop them see Torres's face on MOTD it spoke a thousand words.

by **maguskwt** » Sun Sep 23, 2007 11:00 am

Ciggy wrote:Another thing Babel is a striker he is a brilliant player playing for Holland absolutly world class, even at Ajax, but played out of position having to defend when thats not part of his game, is going to ruin him.

Yup... and one solution which I have been propragating is to sell crouch and buy a class winger like quaresma...

by **Lee2k6** » Sun Sep 23, 2007 11:12 am

babu wrote:
Vato1979 wrote:Rotation??? yes pls !! We need a coach rotation ! ! ! Sack Rafa for leaving Torres on the bench.
Football is big business where you cannot make mistakes like this...
I cannot believe we didn't win that game

this gets my vote for 'muppet post of the year'

gets my vote n all :nod

anyway i was talkin to me mate lastnight in the pub about whether Torres will get to start the Carling cup game on Tuesday an that might have bin one of the reasons he was rested.

but to be honest i couldn't care less about that competition and would rather he be played every league game an rested in the carling an fa cup if anything else.

I reckon he'll start against Reading on Tuesday though.

Liverpool FC Forum

Time to take stock. - Calm down everyone ffs.

Who is online