by bigmick » Tue Feb 12, 2008 8:36 pm
Firstly I must say do love the way people who are Rafa supporters/apologists pick their targets for comparison. If it's not Shankly, it's Wenger or Ferguson. Given our record in the League under Rafa I'd be sticking with the Souness's or the Bruce Rioch's of this World if it was me but there you go.
That said, the way I see it if we're making a comparison with Wenger over the last four years and Rafa is this. Firstly, Rafa has rebuilt a team in Premiership terms which finished fourth the season before he arrived, into a team which if it pulls it's finger out of it's erse has got about an even money chance of finishing fourth this season as well. This has been done at considerable expense, and all the while I would guess that for the vast majority of his tenure he has had within his first choice team (if there is such a thing) Gerrard, Carragher, Finnan, Riise and to a lesser extent Kewell and Hyppia. All players which he inherited of course, there may be others but I'm no statistician.
Wenger, if we really must make the comparison (and once again I'm amazed that people who like Rafa choose this particular battleground) had a team which the season before Rafa came won the Premiership. They won it without losing a game as it happens, and in the vast majority of games the team was largely unchanged (he doesn't go an awful lot for Rafa style doesn't the Arsenal manager). Now from memory (and I'm not going to spend an awful lot of time on this, if I can't remember them then feck it) they had Seaman in goal, Lauren, Sol Campbell, Keown, Ashley Cole, Vierra, Pires, Ljundberg, (fecked if I can remember the other central midfielder) Henry and Bergkamp. It was just about as good a team as I've seen in English domestic football anyway and I include our fantastic teams in that as well.
Now in the time Rafa has been rebuilding a team whilst keeping Gerrard and Carragher as the fulcrum of his side, Wenger has rebuilt the whole unit from top to bottom. During that period he did reach a Champions League final where they lost to a very good Barcelona team, and I'm not sure but I've a feeling they won the FA Cup as well. They didn't though win the Champions League like we did, and we did finish third to their fourth in two seasons. If we look at what we have and where we are now though, surely the sensible comparisons end there? Wenger has built from scratch a young team which is in severe danger of winning the Premiershipand has spent a fraction of what we have in the process.
Someone once said that Wengers methods on team selection are "stuck in the nineties". I'm not sure about that. I think the comparison with any manager to be perfectly honest and the Frenchman in terms of picking up players for nothing and moulding them into an exiting little team is pointless. It's probably best we just accept that he has his own way of doing things and in his particular sphere he is a bit of a one off. Rafa doesn't look too good in direct comparison, but then again not that many managers do I wouldn't have thought.
Last edited by
bigmick on Wed Feb 13, 2008 9:20 pm, edited 1 time in total.
"se e in una bottigla ed e bianco, e latte".