Liverpool FC Forum

[bigmick]

We (Ok then I) did this to death at the start of the season as the team struggled to find any cohesion. Away defeat followed Away defeat and only some cobbled together Home form kept our collective heads above water as the top teams took it in turns to beat us on their home patch. Changes to personel and formation came thick and fast and the players occasionally looked as nonplussed by the whole thing as some of the fans.

Some argued that it was nothing to do with rotation. We had the hardest opening batch of Away games in the history of the Premiership they said and it was hard to argue. We also had a couple of injuries they said, it would keep the players fresh later in the season, Zenden is actually a half-decent player etc etc but some just didn't buy it. Some of us banged on and on about it, bemoaning the revolving nature of team selection and claiming that wewouldn't find consistency of form until we selected with that same consistency. Some claimed it was because steven Gerrard was being played out of position, they were Andy Grayesque in their insistence that our captain should play down the centre. Others though just astuck to their "In Rafa we trust mantra", it'll all be alright in the end.

And here we are three or four months later. The team has found consistenccy of form, both Home and Away. The injuries (save for Kewell and the bodyblow of Zenden) have largely sorted themselves out, as have the defensive and mental frailty which dogged our early season efforts. The club has cruised through a run of potentially easier pickings and save for a disappointing defeat at Blackburn are the in-form team in the league. Even the champions have been seen off with some comfort, Champions League qualification looks almost a certainty and a position in the top two doesn't look out of the question.

So who was right? Was it rotation which helped to prevent us gaining any early season momentum or was it bad luck and a run of difficult fixtures. Are the players benefitting now from playing less, should we always trust Rafa and is Bolo Zenden a good player? Was a point at Sheffield United one gained or two dropped (had to get that one in      ) and if we had picked a settled team from the outset, would we now be talking about a potential push for the title or we about in our correct position in the league table?

My feelings? I think the best way of looking at it is what would we do if the league was starting again under identical circumstances. My feeling is that given the horrendous run of fixtures which were going to follow it, we would make double sure that we won the first Away game of the season. we would probabaly not experiment quite so much, and we would proably be within spitting distance of Man Utd and be in with a chance of winning the league. It's just a thought but my suspicion and hope is that next season we will approach the opening fixtures with the express wish of getting off to a good start and will play something approaching our strongest team in all of them.

[66-1112520797]

Firstly as a mod you should know that this does not belong in gen chat.

Sheffield United was a point gained, one thing you did miss out which I think had some slight effect on our early season form was the WC. Coupled with the amount of rotations Rafa has made, their was a definate lack of understanding amongst the players early on. And even if the WC didnt prove to cause us major problems I dont think it helped neither. In saying that though the other top teams would of had exactly the same problem.
I'd point the finger then at the heavy use of rotation, it just didnt allow us to get going in any way shape or form. I wasnt keen neither seeing Gerrard playing out wide (pardon the Andy Grayesque talk). Most of the time he was on the edge of the games earlier on, he didnt have the impact out wide and couldnt drive the team on when they obviously needed it most. He was isolated mostly, and the form fo our regular stars such as Alonso, Carragher and Hyypia just wasnt there. Infact the only player that was really performing is the man that Gerrards stepped into position, Momo Sissoko.

I think if Rafa has learnt anything, he'll know now not to start the next campaign as he did this, trial and error I suppose. But in saying that we could fininsh the strongest out of the top four because of his rotations earlier on ? WTF A slight contradiction there, but maybe he felt it was nessacery to rest players back from the WC. Looking at it now aswell its seems as though Chelsea are also paying the price of burn out from the WC, players like Shevchenko, Ballack, Lampard Terry and Cole all possibly, but Who knows. I think when Rafa looks back the possibilty of those early points dropped could of spurned our chances of winning the title.

BTW Zendens an okay player, average at best IMO.

Flexing your muscles already Mick, moving around your topic 

[Bad Bob]

Three to four months on and I'm still hard pressed to account for our poor form at the off this season.  I think that means that it was never any one factor but a combination of several, each with knock on effects. 

I'll now concede, with the benefit of hindsight that some of Rafa's team selections were not particularly clever (selecting Zenden at CM whenever 2 of Gerrard, Alonso and Sissoko are fit is simply folly, IMO).  Having said that I will still insist that quite a few of Rafa's rotations were imposed by injuries, niggling or otherwise.  The fact that Carra and Riise took it in turns to keep the physios busy in the first few weeks obviously was going to present problems for the entire team.  We're still missing Kewell, IMO, and this was compounded by injuries of varying duration to Gonzales, Aurelio and now Garcia.  So, given that we haven't had a stable left side pairing all season, I think Rafa can be somewhat forgiven for some of his experiments.

But, it wasn't just injuries.  Gerrard, Alonso, Reina, Finnan, Hyypia, Carragher and Riise all looked varying degrees of jaded to start the season.  Was this due to the World Cup?  In Stevie's case, was it playing out wide?  Was Reina unsettled by the defensive frailties in front of him?  Were the defenders spooked by Reina's eccentricities behind them?  Fook me if I know.  All I know is that too many of the returning lads were out of form at the start of the campaign, which certainly did not help the likes of Pennant, Gonzales and Pennant settle.

And then there's the fixture list.  It sounds like a flimsy excuse at times but it was a big ask for us in a way that it wasn't for our rivals.  Given the aforementioned factors, we certainly could have used more games against the likes of Watford and fewer games against the likes of the Mancs, Chelsea and Arsenal away.

So, was it rotation?  No.  Not exclusively.  Nor was it any one of the other factors.  It was a perfect storm of obstacles that prevented us from getting out of the blocks well.  Some were avoidable and let's hope that Rafa and the players have learned their lessons from those.  Others, though, were not avoidable and that's just football.

[112-1077774096]

mick i have said for the last two seasons that rotation has been the problem with our poor start to both seasons, and i still stand by that.

i would have though rafa learnt after last time but it seemd not, and if it wasnt for our poor start we would be up there now with manure, if not ahead of them.

i know people have different opinions on this and thats their right, but i have developed a bit of a catchphrase on here now which is "the facts dont lie", just look at the figures and they show the real story.

i have also had to defend my thoughts in the gerrard thread, this season also started to come good when gerrard was moved to his preferred and most effective central position (this was only brought about by sissokos injury) and i have to question would we be on this run now if sissoko was still fiit as that would mean gerrard playing out of position and in my opinion becoming more dissolusioned (before anyone complains i am NOT saying sissoko is a bad player, just saying his inclusion puts gerrard where he is less effective).

to be fair this season, even on our good run we have still timkered with the defence by chopping and changing hyppia and agger and that seems to have worked, but the odd change is not a problem, is was the wholesale changes that caused us the problems.

[Bad Bob]

i know people have different opinions on this and thats their right, but i have developed a bit of a catchphrase on here now which is "the facts dont lie", just look at the figures and they show the real story.

i have also had to defend my thoughts in the gerrard thread, this season also started to come good when gerrard was moved to his preferred and most effective central position

But look at it from a different angle, mate, and the facts tell a different story.  For you, it all turned around when Gerrard got moved to the middle but, equally, you could argue that it all turned around once we started playing the likes of Reading and Fulham regularly rather than the Mancs or Arsenal.  The "facts" could suggest that it was mostly the schedule that fecked us over.

Now, as you'll see in my previous post, I'm not really saying that it was just the schedule--I truly believe it was lots of things, including Rafa's rotation and Gerrard's dissatisfaction with playing out wide.  But, this "facts don't lie" stuff offers, I think, a simple answer to a complex issue.  Every "fact" is, after all, open to interpretation! 

[112-1077774096]

like i say bob, we all have different opinions on this   

[bigmick]

For my part, I'm not totally convinced that rotation was the only factor either. In fact, there probably were a number of things going on at the time. My original post is not meant to be a "aren't I clever" sort of rant because I'm certainly not and I'm still not sure I was right anyhow. Gerrard for me is a better player on the right than he is in the centre, although since he's moved inside we can't stop winning league games so maybe I'm wrong on that one. We are definately having an easy run of games which is obviously a factor, but are we winning them because the players are fresh? Somebody made the point about Chelsea and from where I'm sitting (which is admittedly about as far away as it's possible to be) they seem to be on the verge of implosion. I guess the thing that ultimately I find most frustrating is that Man Utd will almost certainly win the league and in my view we are just about their equal whaen we pick something like our best eleven.

[112-1077774096]

and manure have played with a steady team all season mick, and are still looking fresh (well until the last 10 minutes against arsenal)

the problem is we will never have a definitive answer mate, like you say there are different factors, maybe its a mix of things that caused or problems, but to be honest i think the major one was rotation.

[Sabre]

Three to four months on and I'm still hard pressed to account for our poor form at the off this season.  I think that means that it was never any one factor but a combination of several, each with knock on effects. 

I'll now concede, with the benefit of hindsight that some of Rafa's team selections were not particularly clever (selecting Zenden at CM whenever 2 of Gerrard, Alonso and Sissoko are fit is simply folly, IMO).  Having said that I will still insist that quite a few of Rafa's rotations were imposed by injuries, niggling or otherwise.  The fact that Carra and Riise took it in turns to keep the physios busy in the first few weeks obviously was going to present problems for the entire team.  We're still missing Kewell, IMO, and this was compounded by injuries of varying duration to Gonzales, Aurelio and now Garcia.  So, given that we haven't had a stable left side pairing all season, I think Rafa can be somewhat forgiven for some of his experiments.

But, it wasn't just injuries.  Gerrard, Alonso, Reina, Finnan, Hyypia, Carragher and Riise all looked varying degrees of jaded to start the season.  Was this due to the World Cup?  In Stevie's case, was it playing out wide?  Was Reina unsettled by the defensive frailties in front of him?  Were the defenders spooked by Reina's eccentricities behind them?  Fook me if I know.  All I know is that too many of the returning lads were out of form at the start of the campaign, which certainly did not help the likes of Pennant, Gonzales and Pennant settle.

And then there's the fixture list.  It sounds like a flimsy excuse at times but it was a big ask for us in a way that it wasn't for our rivals.  Given the aforementioned factors, we certainly could have used more games against the likes of Watford and fewer games against the likes of the Mancs, Chelsea and Arsenal away.

So, was it rotation?  No.  Not exclusively.  Nor was it any one of the other factors.  It was a perfect storm of obstacles that prevented us from getting out of the blocks well.  Some were avoidable and let's hope that Rafa and the players have learned their lessons from those.  Others, though, were not avoidable and that's just football.

Great. I've been half an hour in the shower thinking how to translate what I thought to answer the original post, and I find it written when I come back 

Bigmick post is great because he numbers a number of reasons, and he asks a key question, who's right? many of us and nobody at the same time. When we write here we always like to be right, but the truth is that this is a complex game with many factors.

There's the world cup, which you already mentioned, there was a couple of international games, which took away some of the spanish lads, there might be also the possibility that Rafa has to review his preseason plans, which we might not doing that correctly. Or perhaps is it that the CL qualification game changes the preseason plans? perhaps.

There's the new signings, there is the fact that Agger was starting to play regularly in the team, and in some games I saw some lack of coordination between the CB

There's of course some bad decissions in rotation, and you know what? there's also bad luck, with quite many balls in the post instead of inside the goal.

And there are probably some other dozens of factors we don't know as we are not inside the dressroom and we watch the team in the pitch or tv.

And here we are trying to be right and discussing about it's Gerrard playing in the middle or overrotation. Heh.

This is a forum and it's nice to discuss after a defeat, but review posts like BM's are necessary. And not converting a complex game like football in a simple matter of one key factor aswell.

[112-1077774096]

i do think the 'over rotation camp' have a better argument though bearing in mid that when the rotation stopped we started winning     

[dawson99]

Everyoen says that this is how rafa did it in spain and thats why Valencia always had a blinding end to the season. We are doing the sam,e sort of thing here, our players are looking fresher than the oppo's and we are getting the points on the board.

What we didnt do however was have anywhere near a good enough start and we have dropped silly points (sheffield utd and blackburn being prime examples)

I do think that rotation is the way forward with so many games in a season but we needto get off the starting blocks a lot quicker and stop dropping silly points to make that push for the elusive premiership title

[112-1077774096]

exactly mate, there is no point having fresh players if they have nothing to play for

[The Manhattan Project]

I think the rotation system is absurd.


I mean seriously, how a player can play football when gravity is spinning him around in circles is crazy IMO.

[80-1169754111]

I like rotation, it works. Like David Abelda said in an Interview, when Rafa wins, rotation is like a starlit bride, but when rotation is used and we lose a match, suddenly rotation is in the axel of evil. I support Rafa, through thick and thin, they say blood is thicker than water, well I see Rafa as my uncle Stan.

[Sabre]

Ah, David Albelda. I hate him. I respect him too. Might talk about him in the Spanish liga thread.

I wanted to ask the mates one thing. Back then some months ago one of the board members was sacked or left the club. I hadn't the time to dive into the depths of that news, but I do think that when a dressroom and a club's surrounding is calm, that is seen in the pitch aswell.

Do you think that had ANY thing to do at all?

Can someone put me in a nutshell what happened with that board member?