Liverpool FC Forum

[The_Rock]

one think no one has mentioned yet and i perish at the thought, but what if the players are trying to force him out or trying to force him into changing his system by putting in inept performances, its not beyond the realms of possibility

U beat me to it......i wanted to post it.... but didn't know what to expect from the "no-matter what....pro rafa" camp here....

Actually....this happened during houllier's last season...The players didn't want to play for him and put up sh1tty performance.

[112-1077774096]

one think no one has mentioned yet and i perish at the thought, but what if the players are trying to force him out or trying to force him into changing his system by putting in inept performances, its not beyond the realms of possibility

U beat me to it......i wanted to post it.... but didn't know what to expect from the "no-matter what....pro rafa" camp here....

Actually....this happened during houllier's last season...The players didn't want to play for him and put up sh1tty performance.

mate its a controversial thing to say, but like i say it is possible, they can't go and talk to the manager and tell him to change it, and i have no doubt if they speak out about it they will be shown the door after a long spell in the reserves, so this is the only option open to them.

no doubt this comment will get slagged of by the 'rafa is god and infallible' posters on here but i wanted to put it in the open for discussion

[ConnO'var]

I don't think you can blame everything on Rafa and rotation mate, Rafa got his team selection and tactics wrong... fair enough. He didn't tell the players to go out and play like blind men. You can't blame Rafa when a player can't pass a ball five yards. Even rotation can't account for some of the sloppy play we saw last night.

Mate, in this, I don't agree.

Good players do not become bad overnight.
They do not forget how to pass overnight.

Too many people put tactics and player qualities as the most important aspect of football management. These are only the technical aspects of the game (an important aspect for sure). But there ARE other aspects that are of equal importance... things like team spirit, continuity, familiarity, camaraderie, morale, motivation, drive etc etc. Once we forget the human factor, even the best players in the world can look decidedly ordinary.

And as far as I'm concerned, these are ALL the responsibility of the manager. Shankly, Paisely et al either recognized this or it came naturally to them and gave these aspects of the game equal importance to the technical stuff.

This team comprises Rafa's players, utilises his tactics, his system, his preparation, his man-management and most importantly, is a result of his DECISIONS.

IMO theres no 2 ways about it. I'm with peewee on this.

The players are ALL to blame for the inept and pathetic performance we showed against OM? I cannot accept that. We can foist of one or 2 players having a bad game.... but the entire team (bar the goalkeeper)? for the last few games?Way too much of a coincidence for me, mate. Something is not right at Anfield and IMO, the problem is Rafa.

We've invested far too much to be rid of Rafa now, but he needs to learn from his mistakes and be more flexible with his ideas. Else, we're gonna flush this season down the crapper yet again......

[josip84]

Hello lads,
Well well well .....that was a day of sorrow for you, and a day of glory for us Marseille fans! Reading your posts shows that all of you are prepared to admit Marseille winning this game was highly deserved, I think everybody can agree with this statement.
I just want to add this :
1. In the first half, the referee's decisions were outrageously in favour of LFC. It had been a long time since I had last seen such a biased, one way, one-eyed refereeing. Things got more balanced in the second half. But in the first half, the refereeing was sheer disgrace.
2. Is Carragher still a football player? Or has he turned to wrestling?

That's all folks. 
Looking forward to seeing you in Marseille in December. I' m sure you'll enjoy understanding how a stadium can turn into a volcanic eruption immediately followed by a major earthquake.

[account deleted by request]

I don't know ConnO'var, we all laughed when Chelsea lost the "special one", all their players upset etc etc, but they haven't played that badly and even managed a good away win last night. If the teams set up badly, which I believe was the case with us last night it doesn't take much to get them struggling to get a hold on the game.

Early last season I thought our heads dropped on more than one occasion, but I didn't see that last night. I just saw a team struggling to play good football or even make a simple pass. Maybe Rafa has lost the dressing room, but I didn't see any evidence of it last night mate.

[KRobbo10]

At the start of the season we all said our priority is the premiership this season, and rafa has said that is his priority aswell so with us having a big game Sunday it looks like Rafa put Kuyt on the bench to rest him aswell as putting leto on the left.

Yes we lost the game last night and badly and it wasn't good to watch but if we win against spurs Sunday all will be forgotten so lets get behind the team instead of blaming players and manager.

Lets prove why are supprt is so good.

[SouthCoastShankly]

Did Sissoko put his boots on the wrong feet last night?

[bunglemark2]

Lots of interesting posts in this thread....lots of valid points raised....
Where the phuck has LFC's traditional defensive solidity gone ? Hyypia is 34 on Sunday coming, and we expect his - no disrespect to the man - to be able to cope in the world's top club competition with the likes of Messi, Henry....and even some muppet called Cisse ? Don't get me wrong, I'm not laying the blame squarely at Hyypia's feet for last night, but if you consider the whole defence has to sit deeper to try to counter the pace of top European club strikers becuase ONE defender - or possibly TWO including Carra - don't simply have the pace, you're asking for trouble....
And what the phuck is with Sissoko - he didn't look even slightly ar$ed being on the pitch last night...
From the back to the front - Torres up front : I don't care what anybody says, if a club spends a fortune on someone like him, the onus is on HIM to prove he's worth it....

And no excuses for Rafa either. All that wild gesticulating on the bench when we were one down, and before that even - cop the phuck on. Rotation is bo!!ox, man....How the phuck can you expect a team to gel and "know" where others will be when they don't even play together week on week....

Jesus wept....it's going rapidly downhill and no stop in sight

[maypaxvobiscum]

Tell ya what i'll go further. Gerrard has been SH.IT. Captain my hes done nothing lately. Great player without a doubt. But when it comes to performances in the games that dont require a trophy he goes missing. Name an instance in which im proved wrong.

Just before we go any further, are you being serious here mate? I mean it was only in the first game of the season at Villa that he won the match for us with an absolute World-Class free kick. In the second game of the season, he pinges a lovely little throgh ball into Torres which led to the goal against Chelsea.

I can understand your frustration with the way we are performing, and I haven't seen as much football as I would like but in the games I have seen, to say Gerrard has been useless is just being silly.

I've said this a few times now but it's not as simple as scapegoating one player or bemoaning the lack of another. The team is now woefully short of form and confidence and because of that, all the parts within it are now malfunctioning. Rectifying this problem takes time and patience. It brings the previos pages and pages of debate about the "R" word into sharp focus and is the precise reason why some of us advocate not fiddling around too much when you stumble upon a formula which appears to be working. The reality is of course rectifying the problem can be very difficult.

Those expecting us to suddenly start playing well are going to be disappointed in my view because thats not how it works. Even a good win won't put us back into form, it takes more than one game. It requires a run of results for confidence to grow. When it grows to the extent that even if you start the game poorly, or even go one behind but still think you will win, then you're onto something. We'll all just have to wait for that to come around though and in the meantime it's going to be a rocky road. If and when it does come round of course, some of us will be advocating doing the minimum possible to disturb the equilebrium.

Im not bemoaning one player. What im doing is highlighting the fact that Gerrard is our captain and should be one of the front runners in ensuring our team gets the result. I hate to say it but Roy Keane had more influence in all games he played in then what our captain has.

Oh boo hoo, Roy Keane had more influence than our captain. How about Roy Keane's probably one of the best ever players in his position lad...

Thats like saying Maradonna done more than Gerrard, that means Gerrard must be ...

either you're deluded or just a bias liverpool fan. wake up, ''smeg'' yourself if you have to.

[mattylfc]

That is the worst performance i have seen in a long long time. From start to finish we were absolutely appauling and this time it was definitely down to Rafas team selection.

We obviously missed Agger and Alonso and Rafa cant do anything about that.

What really annoyed me is when i saw the starting line up and saw Aurelio and Leto down the left hand side. They have barely figured this season and Rafa decides to play them both in the CL, i just dont understand that one. It is clear to see that Leto is no-where near ready to play for our first team. Aurelio is just poor in my opinion. If you are going to play one of them surely have someone else down the left who has played more than a couple of times this season.

What annoyed me about the selction of these two players is the fact that we had Riise on the bench and Babel not even in the squad, both of whom have hardly figured lately so surely rotation can not be an excuse for their exclusion. Im completely baffled by this one.

I can understand to an extent when Rafa rotates between strikers for certain games and how Mascherano may suit a certain game better than Alonso but how can he justify playing Leto instead of Riise and Babel, i just dont understand it. There was just no need to include Leto last night.

I hate to single out players in such a poor team performance but i havnt seen such a dismal display as what i saw in Sissoko last night. My mates have been ripping him to shreds lately and i have been defending him no-end. After last night, what can i say?  His touch was terrible, his passes didnt find any of our players, he just looked completely lost.

All over the park we played far too deep. Our defense sat too deep and our strikers werent working hard enough to close the ball down, this meant that our midfield were playing far too deep and Gerrard was once again below par.

Quite a few people have slated Crouch and said that Torres didnt get the service. Maybe Torres didnt get the service but for me, Crouch couldnt do much more than he did last night. He gave the ball away at times but you can understand why his touch isnt quite there with the amount of minutes he has played lately.  Think he did ok, doesnt look entirely happy though which is understandable.

Once again, we started very poorly and we let them get into the game. We didnt seem to adapt to the slick surface. I found this very strange because Marseille seem to adapt straight away.

Overall we were extremely poor and we have not done ourselves any favours. The league is much more important to me but games like this in the CL shouldnt have been a problem at this stage. I just hope that our performances in the league wont be affected by the team selection Rafa will now have to make to get us through the CL.

Very angry.

[bigmick]

I'm not as bothered about this competition as some, and I didn't see the game so thats probably the reason I'm not quite so fired up about things. My suspicion is that we will still get out of the group anyway so there's no need to panic just yet.

It's fairly obvious I think that Rafa knows we are going to have to be on our mettle over the next month or so in the league, so he's getting the rotation out of his system in Europe. While I applaud his decision (well IMHO he's made the decision anyway, we shall see) to concentrate his resources on the Premiership, he might have been better off on reflection playingn his strongest team so we could try and get a bit of momentum going.

Anyways he didn't and we didn't, so we'll just have to hope that the aforementioned strongest eleven can eke out a result on Sunday.

[maypaxvobiscum]

terrible performance by rafa.

[ConnO'var]

I don't know ConnO'var, we all laughed when Chelsea lost the "special one", all their players upset etc etc, but they haven't played that badly and even managed a good away win last night. If the teams set up badly, which I believe was the case with us last night it doesn't take much to get them struggling to get a hold on the game.

Early last season I thought our heads dropped on more than one occasion, but I didn't see that last night. I just saw a team struggling to play good football or even make a simple pass. Maybe Rafa has lost the dressing room, but I didn't see any evidence of it last night mate.

Fair enough mate. Valid points....

God only knows what's going on behind the scenes but I'm not exactly getting a warm, fuzzy feeling bout the way things are going right now.....

Whether it's due to set-up, team selection, tactics, motivation and god only knows what else... as manager, Rafa needs to sort this out.

[josip84]

In your analysis of last night's game, you LFC fans seem to be forgetting what may well be the main (if not the only) reason for your poor performance : LFC played very badly and lost simply because  Marseille got them to play very badly and lose. Marseille have played their best game of the season by far. For the very first time since August, we have had the opportunity to see Marseille play as a team. Unfortunately for you, such a thing happened in the game at Anfield...
IMHO the explanation for LFC being defeated is as simple as that.

[mattylfc]

It's fairly obvious I think that Rafa knows we are going to have to be on our mettle over the next month or so in the league, so he's getting the rotation out of his system in Europe. While I applaud his decision (well IMHO he's made the decision anyway, we shall see) to concentrate his resources on the Premiership, he might have been better off on reflection playingn his strongest team so we could try and get a bit of momentum going.

Anyways he didn't and we didn't, so we'll just have to hope that the aforementioned strongest eleven can eke out a result on Sunday.

The annoying thing is though Mick is that we now have a good enough squad to rotate and still put out a very strong team without involving the fringe players.

IMO there is no need to involve Leto yet, let him do his learning in the reserves or in the carling cup. I also think that we have enough cover to suggest that Aurelio shouldnt figure much, some will disagree but i just dont rate the guy.

For me Arbeloa is our first choice left back but there is no reason why Riise cant play there in games where his defensive duties arent so important.

As i have said before, i am not a fan of rotation in large numbers but i am a fan of changing one or two players to suit that particular game.

When i first saw the line up last night i could understand why Sissoko started but you can never expect that he will play that bad. When he is though, change it and get Masch on.