Liverpool FC Forum

s@int wrote:I don't want to p!ss on your chips Mick but as we played 4-4-2 in 3 out of our last 4 league games last season including our final game at Spurs what makes you think he will stick with 4-2-3-1 next season? Especially if we buy Keane which seems almost a certainty now.

s@int wrote:If you had asked people early last season, I think you would have found that most of them thought we had a midfield that in all likelyhood would be around for years too! New contracts handed out, future assured......and then....

Sissoko gone, Alonso( ?), and Gerrard now a second striker, or if Keane and Barry do come..... WHAT(?)

bigmick wrote:No I don't think he will play a 4-5-1 in the same way we played it last season Saint. Certainly if we pay 20 mill for Keane then he has to play, and it'll be much more of a 4-4-2. No my point wasn't that we'd stick to same method, but more that we proved once and for all that whatever method you settle on, if you broadly stick with it you'll improve as a unit. Now broadly sticking with it doesn't of course mean you play the same team in every single game, bit it does mean you have a a structure, a framework within which you usually play. It doesn't even mean that you are not allowed to go for a surprising selection now and then, a 4-5-1 away to Man Utd for instance, or a 3-5-2 at home to Hull, but it does mean that you have a method, a core first tream which you revert to on most occasions.

Last season Rafa did what all good managers do, he made the best of what he had at his disposal. He had strikers which wern't up to it in one case and aren't up to it in another, and found a use for them. He had wide midfielders who aren't up to it in two cases, and are up to it but can't be bothered in another so he replaced them. It was a classic example of how best to utilize the meagre resources at your disposal. Unfortunately of course he signed almost all of them, but no matter thats not the point oin this occasion.

Now although the continuity, reduction in rotation etc did help, the 4-5-1 did prove limited against stubborn defences, and against top quality teams who were able to isolate Gerrard and Torres from the rest of the team. Because of this, and also because he has to get some cover for the star striker he's going for Keane (at least thats how I see it anyway) and we'll play 4-4-2. As I've often said though mate, I don't really care who he thinks his best team is, where he plays the players (obviously though within reasin, not Crouch or Gerrard on the left wing) as long as he gives whatever selection he goes for a decent chance to work. Had we tried the 4-5-1 in the first couple of months of the season last term, not only would we never have found out whether it'd work, we'd probably never have remembered that we actually tried it such were the frequency of the changes to the team. In actual fact, for all I know we probably did try it and I've forgotten all about it     

If we want though to plough a lone furrow, to make our own history we could look at neither. Who's to say that in a couple of years those same teams won't be looking at us, at how we play strikers on the wing, make hundreds of changes to the team throughout a season, buy sh!t loads of youngsters who are never seen and finish fourth without making a challenge on the league each season?





All that said, I like the way we are going right now.

-OUR REVENGE WILL COME-
AS ROMA ULTRAS