by bigmick » Thu Oct 04, 2007 9:12 pm
It still rumbles on and on, and the battle lines are drawn deeper than ever. Just to return briefly to the notion that you can change the team by three four and five players and not have an effect on fluency.
I made the point on another thread that if you didn't change the team at all but swapped around the fullbacks, or exchanged the wingers we'd all accept surely that this would have a fairly big impact on the way the team was playing. Even more subtle adjustments, asking the holding midfielder to sit ten yards further up or tucking the wide midfielder in has a huge effect. If we pick Sami then I would think most would accept it will have an effect on the way we defend (not necessarily detremental, that's not my point) and similarly if Crouch starts up top then most poeple seem to be of the opinion that it fundementally alters the way we attack. Funnily enough most of the people who are "pro's" on the rotation question would also claim (possibly correctly based on current evidence) that Alonso is intrinsic to our success and if he's not there, the whole team pattern is altered.
And yet, this is where forgive me but I'm absolutely baffled as to the logic of it all, we can make three, four, five, and sometimes even six changes to the team in nearly every game and it has no effect on the fluency of the team? What no effect whatsoever? Zip? Because the players train together during the week (and believe me they don't do too much when there are three games a week like there are at the moment) this means that we can stick out any combo you care to mention and expect them to gel, to produce flowing football? I just don't buy it I'm sorry but it makes no sense to me at all.
People keep saying that Ferguson, Wenger and Mourinho rotate, and they do. But to what extent, do they make as many changes, as often as we have this season? Where is Paul Tomkins and his stats?
I ask again. Is it really the case that Toshack and Keegan never had an understanding, an appreciation of where each other were, a telepathic range finder when they scored all those goals? Did Dalglish not just look like he had eyes in the back of his head when he played Rush in without looking, did he actually have them? Did Souness and Terry Mac not instinctively know how to ghold in stay in perfect unision, or Hansen and Lawrenson read each other as well as the play? Was it all the result of playing between the cones, or patterns of play? Did they not build up an understanding over many games playing together. Do those managers who talk about strikers "buiding a partnership" delude themselves, can you just stick any two strikers together and they'll instantly hit it off?
Jeez football has really changed over the last three years I can tell you that. We are either in the midst of a revolution which is going to change the way football is looked at, and consign the accepted wisdom of the last 100 years as well as those who proport to believe in it, have played the game, have managed clubs and currently manage clubs very successfully into the garbage bin, or then again Rafa might concieveably be wrong. It's an interesting one.
Last edited by
bigmick on Thu Oct 04, 2007 9:13 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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