Liverpool FC Forum

by **Sabre** » Mon Oct 01, 2007 11:03 pm

I'll leave question one for those who think anybody is irreplaceable, including Gerrard.

Question Two.

BIgmick asks

I have another question. Number two if you like. Given that we have been resting our players more than the other teams, why do we have to wait until the end of the season for it to have an effect? Can we expect to see some geater verve, awareness and spark in the games against Arsenal and Tottenham from the likes of Torres? If the answer is no, and the reason it's no is because the Arsenal and Tottenham players are not sufficiently fatigued yet to allow the resting to really have an effect, why then are our players sufficiently tired to need a rest in the first place

Yes, rotation helps in order to end the season strongly. That's an opinion of our manager, and for that matter, the amount of finals reached this seasons back up his words. People can talk of luck when you eliminate chelsea one year. But when you're reaching other finals (FA cup), and you're eliminating Chelsea again yesteryear reaching the final of the most important competition in Europe, it means that you are indeed ending up stronger than other teams.

But, what about the next games, what about Tottenham and Arsenal? good question.

Rotation also have good sides on the short term:

We all agree Mascherano, Alonso, and Gerrard are excellent midfielders. We all agree we want the strongest squad in the pitch. Therefore, if Alonso is injured, most of us and that includes the antirotationists, will want Gerrard and Mascherano in the middle. So, if this couple of midfielders play against Wigan, and then have to play against Marseille, then you can bet that in the next LEAGUE game this couple won't be as fresh as if they didn't play midweek. That's where rotation is useful.

Rafa wants to have the right players, for the right game, at the right form. The point of resting Torres against Birmingham is no other than having him at 100% when he's needed in the next match for instance, and if any, Birmingham was the right game to give him that rest. So Rotation is not about the last 15 games, only.

So, in a nut shell answering question two, yes, you can expect 100% of Torres verve, spark and all that against this important teams

(1) That's the point of rotation in the short term. Rafa doesn't have a perfect starting eleven for the league, I think he preffers Alonso for some games and Mascha for others for instance. If we knew beforehand what's the ideal starting eleven of Rafa for each league game, then we could see the rotations would make much more sense.

(1) And if he doesn't play well you can blame him aswell, not rotation

by **Ciggy** » Mon Oct 01, 2007 11:11 pm

I think the reason our central midfielders havent been playing very well is because they are worried at exposing Hyypia, since Agger has been injured the midfielders are having to come and collect the ball or just a big hoof.

Agger brings the ball forward and has the pace to get back, granted not the quickest but quicker than Hyypia and Carra.

Gerrard and Mascherano have probably been told not to roam forward that much and be more defensive.

by **account deleted by request** » Mon Oct 01, 2007 11:22 pm

Lando_Griffin wrote:Who's got the least bookings?

Mascherano has one, same as YOU, and Xabi mate

by **bigmick** » Mon Oct 01, 2007 11:25 pm

Well I'm certainly glad that we can expect to see to some short term benefits because if we don't get some positive results over the next six or seven games, we might as well start saving players for the Champoions League.

Question four, (question three I put to AB earlier) is back to a point I made about a week ago as to whether the policy of rotation could be judged to have been a success over the previous three seasons, and most notably last season. I made the point that whether or not it had been successful largely depended on how good you thought our team was. We finished the season twenty one points behind the Champions, if you think we should have been closer it was reasonable to assume the rotation hadn't worked. If you think that's about right, the result had been neutral and if you think we were actually worse than that, the rotation had worked. Now not surprisingly or indeed not without justification, people latched onto the fact (at least it's a fact in my opinion anyway) that once we had realised we weren't going to win the league but would probably qualify for the Champions League instead, we began to take the league less seriously. Fair enough says I. How did we take it less seriously? Well we kind of rotated our better players even more. Guess what happened? Well we didn't play with the maturity or the quality which a less rotated team containing more of your better players would. No surprise there then but I digress.

Anyway the point of this ramble is to reframe the question. If we assume that those of us who felt we gave up on the league a bit are correct, and many of the games we drew we could in fact have won how many points could we have got? Well I think we'd certainly have beaten Man City, Villa and a few other teams. I'm going to make a bold assumption and say we would have converted six of those draws into wins had we have been really going for it. Now some might say that's over optimistic but in the interests of fairness that's how I'm calling it. We are instantly 12 points better off. But what of Man Utd? Last game of the season they got beat at Home to West Ham. They had already won the league by this point, and I'm going to be bold and predict that had they needed to win, they would have. In the end it makes us nine points better off overall. I'm asking is twelve points behind the eventual winners a fair reflection on how good we were? I don't think it is.

by **LFC2007** » Mon Oct 01, 2007 11:45 pm

bigmick wrote:Anyway the point of this ramble is to reframe the question. If we assume that those of us who felt we gave up on the league a bit are correct, and many of the games we drew we could in fact have won how many points could we have got? Well I think we'd certainly have beaten Man City, Villa and a few other teams. I'm going to make a bold assumption and say we would have converted six of those draws into wins had we have been really going for it. Now some might say that's over optimistic but in the interests of fairness that's how I'm calling it. We are instantly 12 points better off. But what of Man Utd? Last game of the season they got beat at Home to West Ham. They had already won the league by this point, and I'm going to be bold and predict that had they needed to win, they would have. In the end it makes us nine points better off overall. I'm asking is twelve points behind the eventual winners a fair reflection on how good we were? I don't think it is.

We fielded strong teams against those two teams, and underperformed. I don't think rotation was to blame for those particular games. Perhaps rotation earlier on in the season led us into the position in the league of playing for nothing, and hence it affected our motivation and focus.

We rotated far more against the likes of Fulham and Portsmouth for example, those were games that we can pretty much unanimously agree we over rotated, but it was understandable given our predicament.

The premise behind your post is that over rotation was at fault for the 21 point deficit at the end of the season, perhaps partly, but a fair bit of that rotation was forced.

by **bigmick** » Mon Oct 01, 2007 11:57 pm

Fair enough LFC and you can certainly remember the selections in the various games better than I can. I'm in the curious position here of kind of sticking up for the other side in order to think of a decent argument. As I've said a couple of times, I'm at a loss really as to what the benefits have been so far of our love of the rotational system. I must confess this "finishing the season strongly" stuff, with the exception of the season before last (where we unquestionably did, looking like the best team in the league in the last three months) hasn't happened enough for me to justify the pain. If for instance we were to have a dodgy little couple of results in our dodgy little spell of fixtures (sorry for all the dodginess but there it is) then our willinglness to risk points in order to rest key players in earlier fixtures will once again look like folly.

Question still remains though, how good were we last season. My feeling is that we were plenty good enough to finish the season no worse than two wins away from winning it.

by **LFC2007** » Tue Oct 02, 2007 12:07 am

bigmick wrote:I must confess this "finishing the season strongly" stuff, with the exception of the season before last (where we unquestionably did, looking like the best team in the league in the last three months) hasn't happened enough for me to justify the pain.

I understand what you are saying however, you must look at each season on its own.

Last season we finished strongly in the UCL, the league was effectively over towards the end despite scope to make up significant ground on the leaders in retrospect....but this is the point:

Our poor start to the league wasn't just down to rotation IMO, players didn't perform, we made one or two poor acquisitions in the summer prior to the start of the league and we had a few injuries to the left hand side of the team - influencing selection/tactics for the rest of the team.

by **account deleted by request** » Tue Oct 02, 2007 12:13 am

As I see it, in midfield we have 3 top class midfielders and Sissoko who is still a great asset but not quite up to the standard of the other 3.

In Attack we have 1 top class player plus 3 who are not up to the standard of Torres.

However if you take Gerrard out of the team we are losing a considerable goal threat, if you then take Torres out, our goal threat has been significantly reduced.

No matter that Alonso has scored 2 goals this season (one a fluke) I still expect that by the end of the season Gerrard will have scored more goals than the other three midfielders combined. Unfortunately I am worried that Torres might also claim the same over Kuyt,Crouch and Veronin given a decent run of games.

Regarding Rafa and his rotation, you could argue that it was rotation that got us to 4 finals in 3 years. Having said all that and admitted that in each final we were chasing the game, which final did we look the fittest team in? At best we looked as tired as our opponents, even against an ageing Milan.

I think we have to look elsewhere for the benefits of rotation rather than physical fitness. Sharpness and mental alertness being two obvious benefits of rotation. If we really wanted to rest players because they are tired we should leave them out of the squad so they dont have to travel, rather than just out of the team.

In answer to your question Mick, I don't think Rafa thought we could win the league last season but thought we could get top 4 and win the CL, and set his stall out accordingly.

by **redtrader74** » Tue Oct 02, 2007 12:17 am

Mick you still don't believe that we could have won the league last year, as you said you think we could have got to within two wins, so 21 or 6 points away, we're still not Champions.

On your question on whether rotation has worked... very difficult, we need a parallel universe with a Rafa that doesn't rotate to compare with!

The facts are that we have rotated, and over the 3 years it resulted with 4 Cup finals, our best points tally in the league, and record breaking runs, all during a period of RE-BUILDING. Success or failure? I believe its success. The difference between winning and losing is tiny, imo, for example Ratboys goal on Saturday actually flicked off the defenders foot and out of the path of the keeper...had that defender been rotated.....well in Rafas world he may have stopped the goal.

I accept that of the top four sides, we were in the worst shape, on the pitch and financially on Rafas appointment, it is because i remember this, that i find it strange that many of us criticise Rafas strategy, when it is truly only this season that he has the tools to fully utilise his methods.

by **bigmick** » Tue Oct 02, 2007 12:20 am

I'm not going to argue that we were a touch unlucky with injuries at the start of the campaign. It was hardly at crisis level, but we had a couple of injuries. Here's the rub for me though, we have a couple of injuries and therefore have to change the team, well that's why we didn't get particularly good results then obviously. We change the team of our own valition however, and if we don't get good results it's nothing to do with those changes we made, the players who did take the field were more than good enough to get a good result. We finished strongly in one of the three seasons Rafa was manager and thats because the players were fresh. We didn't finish strongly in the other two seasons and thats nothing to do with rotation. We had a really poor spell towards the end of last season in the league which is nothing to do with rotation, whereas we beat Chelsea in the CL game and that's because the players were fresh. We appeared knackered however in the CL final, which is nothing to do with anything, it's just one of those things.

by **redtrader74** » Tue Oct 02, 2007 12:23 am

Big difference between forced changes and unforced ones. I think you're playing devils advocate Mick.

by **bigmick** » Tue Oct 02, 2007 12:29 am

redtrader74 wrote:Mick you still don't believe that we could have won the league last year, as you said you think we could have got to within two wins, so 21 or 6 points away, we're still not Champions.

Oh most definately I beleive we could have won the league last season. We woiuld have had to have played our best team in nearly every game and taken a huge gamble with injuries, but given a good run with those I think we could have won it yes. The reason I believe this is that I think our first team was capable of competing with the good teams when selected. Now I know somebody will pull up the stats showing that in actual fact we only beat Arsenal at Home out of the top teams in the league, but there were mitigating circumstances in other games to excuse us, and only in the Man Utd away game (where we were beaten fair and square) and Arsenal away for various reasons were we significantly second best all season.

I know I'm in the minority of one on this, but I do think it is possible we could won the league last season. Unlikely, but possible.

by **LFC2007** » Tue Oct 02, 2007 12:38 am

bigmick wrote:Here's the rub for me though, we have a couple of injuries and therefore have to change the team, well that's why we didn't get particularly good results then obviously. We change the team of our own valition however, and if we don't get good results it's nothing to do with those changes we made, the players who did take the field were more than good enough to get a good result. We finished strongly in one of the three seasons Rafa was manager and thats because the players were fresh. We didn't finish strongly in the other two seasons and thats nothing to do with rotation. We had a really poor spell towards the end of last season in the league which is nothing to do with rotation, whereas we beat Chelsea in the CL game and that's because the players were fresh. We appeared knackered however in the CL final, which is nothing to do with anything, it's just one of those things.

The injuries are one reason that contributed to our poor start, they were by no means the sole reason for our poor start. You can't do anything about forced rotation, it happens and we need to adapt to it.

If you have all, or nearly all of your players available for selection then you're going to have more possibilities with which to approach a match, and possibilities to win.

When we change the team of our own valition, and lose, it may be partly down to rotation, and partly down to momentum due to forced rotation earlier on, and a number of other factors. If you've been missing key players down the left side for the first 2 months of the season, it's difficult to find balance within the side. However, there is much more to winning a football match than team selection alone.

The poor spell in the league at the end of last season was partly down to a shifting of priorities due to the predicament we found ourselves in, was our position the result of unforced over rotation? Not entirely, there were many factors. It (the season) has to be viewed holistically. What about the loss of Kewell for example, he added much balance to the left side in the previous season (05/06), or the loss of Aurelio early on. What about a few poor acquisitions such as Gonzales and Zenden? Key players underperforming? It's not as simple as we would have won but for unforced overrotation.

by **bigmick** » Tue Oct 02, 2007 12:59 am

LFC2007 wrote:The poor spell in the league at the end of last season was partly down to a shifting of priorities due to the predicament we found ourselves in, was our position the result of unforced over rotation? Not entirely, there were many factors. It has to be viewed holistically. What about the loss of Kewell for example, he added much balance to the left side in the previous season (05/06), or the loss of Aurelio early on. What about a few poor acquisitions such as Gonzales and Zenden? Key players underperforming? It's not as simple as we would have won but for unforced overrotation.

I may already be viewing the whole thing holistically for all I know. If I'm not you'll have to excuse me as I've no fecking idea whatsoever what it means

To be honest though LFC, you are starting to show promise and I might be about to welcome you into the anti-rotationers club. We pretty much agree on everything (no really we do) and rotation alone certainly does not lose you football matches. You are quite right to point to injuries, bad aquisitions, bad refereeing decisions, suspensions (I know you didn't mention the last two but you would have got to them eventually :eyebrow

).

I think the best way of looking at it is to go for the conservative approach. Don't disturb the equilebrium unless you really have to. One day somebody will explain to me how a forced rotation is different to one which you do of your own free will (presumeably then if Gerrard and Torres had been injured at Pompey it's different than us choosing to leave them out?) but they haven't managed to put it into simple enough terms for me to understand thus far. Thanks for at least bothering to respond though mate. It seems to me that most people have already draughted question five. It is this,

5. Mick, why don't you stop being a boring tw@t and discuss something else. I think they have probably come to the conclusion not to debate it with me because it just encourages me. The worst part about it is of course that they are entirely correct

by **LFC2007** » Tue Oct 02, 2007 1:08 am

It's amazing how everything gradually drifts back to rotation.....slowly but surely we'll get there every time!

I'm off to get bevvied.

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