Liverpool FC Forum

[Bam]

Rafa needed to rotate thats fair enough, no "anti-R" in his right mind will expect us to play the same 11 every week. And to be fair to Rafa, he's pretty much stuck with a settled team.

But even though I except this as part of the game, I dont like it. As imo it causes us a whole host of potential problems, like last night. We struggled and there is no two ways about it, if and when we do lose under a heavily rotated team it will come under scrutiny, hell I even scrutinised it after last nights win.

In saying that also I didnt see the need for the formation we played, fair enough, start with it if your that cautious. But imo Rafa should of changed that at HT or straight after, for the love of Christ I couldnt see us getting a goal. And have to thank Bubba Dioup for that ...... Cheers Superman !

[account deleted by request]

While I think its fair to question the rotation last night, I think questions should be asked of the players that came in as well. Pennant , Babel and Lucas hardly grasped the opportunity with both hands. I think we should EXPECT a little more from players when they are given the chance.

What it did bring home to me is how shallow our squad is at the moment with injuries. Once you get past 15 or so regular players the drop in standard is quite frightening, if last night is any guide anyway.

[Bad Bob]

While I think its fair to question the rotation last night, I think questions should be asked of the players that came in as well. Pennant , Babel and Lucas hardly grasped the opportunity with both hands. I think we should EXPECT a little more from players when they are given the chance.

What it did bring home to me is how shallow our squad is at the moment with injuries. Once you get past 15 or so regular players the drop in standard is quite frightening, if last night is any guide anyway.

That was my feeling as well, mate.  Without Riera in the team we suddenly look very ordinary on the left of midfield.  We have a bit more cover on the right, in theory, but as long as Pennant plays like that he should be nowhere near the team and Benayoun is nothing more than an adequate stop-gap down the right at best.  We're paper thin at right back as well.  We really do see a real dip in quality the deeper into the squad we go and that's a worry...particularly given the likelihood that we won't be strengthening significantly in January.

[GYBS]

Keane and Reira both needed a rest to be protected as nursing injuries so can see wht they didnt start - agger for sami is simple enough and can understand Lucas in for masher who himself is coming back from an injury so pretty the changes were justified and we won but as saint said players like pennant didnt grab the chance .

[Sabre]

Lucas game was dissapointing. He made some mistakes and after those he hadn't confidence in himself and played simple and dull.

However, I remember that when Alonso was coming back from injury, Lucas played well last season. It's not the same for a player to have games, then asked to perform, and perform, rather than keeping him in the bench for 7 games, and then ask him to perform.

That's why I think you cannot measure rotation in one game, but as a policy through out many games. One of the good sides of rotation is that you try to keep sharp more than the regular 14 players that usually participate in the team.

So, when, suddenly, you give 6 not regular players a game against Arsenal in the cup, a disaster might happen. And it happened.

Needless to say, if you play with fire, you drop 4 regulars, and you bring 4 non regulars who have not matches in their pocket and besides have less quality than the regulars, you have a worse game. So I agree the team selection was dangerous yesterday, but it's not a good example to criticise rotation as a policy.

[stmichael]

Haven't read any papers today yet but no doubt they'll be mentions of Rafa's team selection whilst United making 5 changes against West Ham including resting Van Der Sar and Rooney will be completely ignored as usual.

[LFC2007]

I've just read that Keane and Riera had slight knocks, so perhaps it was wasn't so much a case of styling.

[Bam]

I've just read that Keane and Riera had slight knocks, so perhaps it was wasn't so much a case of styling.

Yeah we read that hours ago mate, keep up.

[LFC2007]

I've just read that Keane and Riera had slight knocks, so perhaps it was wasn't so much a case of styling.

Yeah we read that hours ago mate, keep up.

I thought it was an important point as it would undermine my earlier opinion that Rafa changed it around too much.

[Bam]

I've just read that Keane and Riera had slight knocks, so perhaps it was wasn't so much a case of styling.

Yeah we read that hours ago mate, keep up.

I thought it was an important point as it would undermine my earlier opinion that Rafa changed it around too much.

Fair enough.

[Bad Bob]

I've just read that Keane and Riera had slight knocks, so perhaps it was wasn't so much a case of styling.

In those situations I would urge Rafa to only make the 2 necessary changes then.  Whether it's through styling, through injury/suspension or through some combination is kind of beside the point in terms of the team's play.  Four changes is going to present a chance for significant disruption, regardless of why they were changed.

[LFC2007]

I've just read that Keane and Riera had slight knocks, so perhaps it was wasn't so much a case of styling.

In those situations I would urge Rafa to only make the 2 necessary changes then. 

I thought they influenced the other changes. That is, without Keane, Kuyt near enough had to play up top (because Babel was really our only other option for the left). That meant Pennant, or Benayoun had to come in on the right. The only change I'd then question would be Lucas, take him out and play Benayoun alongside Kuyt, but even then I'm not so sure it would've made a great deal of difference. It leaves one unnecessary change and three forced changes, which brings it back to the questions about squad depth again.

[bigmick]

Rotation ought to be largely be taken care of by injuries. Wednesday night being a classic example, if two players are actually carrying knocks (and I use the word "if" advisedly) then there's tour two "restings"/ "rotations sorted. Two of the Hungry Cheetahs (like that Bob) can come off the bench and have a go. Coping with all that is enough for any team to deal with, although I do accept LFC's point to some extent that coping with the absences does sometimes mean you have to switch players positions and therefore make an extra change. There would have been the possibility of playing Gerrard wide right with Masherano and Alonso centrally if Kuyt ws going to play up top. Equally, Babel could fill in down the left like he normally does while Benayoun could flit in and out of it up front. Agger oughtn't to be too tired I shouldn't think after playing three games, indeed his blossoming partnership with Carragher could do with as much work as we can give it.

My point in an earlier post though was that I've never bought into this "but the players he put out were plenty good enough to be Luton" line (accepting of course that we did wiun the game, even with the selection). Football matches are not played in isolation of each other is what I mean, teams carry momentum into and out of games and it's an extremely important factor. Ferguson did his nut when Man Utd only beat West Ham 2-0, partly because of goal difference considerations (which we are going to have to consider at some point too but I'll come back to that) but also beause they took their feet off the gas in the second half. They passed up the opportunity to build their persona, their momentum. Smash West Ham 5-0 at Home and the next team which went to Old Trafford is half beat before they even get there.

Similarly Chelsea, off the back of a defeat against us didn't need to go oop North and beat Hull 3-2 in an end to end encounter. No, they needed to smack Hull's erse and re-establish authority. They needed it for their own confidence and to demonstrate to all that our result against them was indeed a blip, and not a bliiiiiiiip.

We on the other hand are trying to convince everyone, mostly ourselves, that we are genuine contenders. It's all very well saying it, but believing it is an entirely different thing. We came into the Pompey game on the back of a fantastic result against Chelsea, but instead of choosing to build on that with another emphatic performance we took the option of IMHO a wee bit too much rotation and were fortunate to win the game in the end. Does it matter, we won anyway? Well this is precisely my point, I think it does yes. Does it matter that Spurs drew 4-4 with Arsenal as opposed to losing? Course it does and anyone who thinks any different is living in cloud cuckoo land. We will now go into our next fixture with IMHO less momentum than we could have had, playing against a team who are just starting their season and on a roll. It doesn't mean we are doomed, but it makes our task much harder. My fear is we could yet pay a belated price for our tendency to over style on Wednesday. If we do and I was to suggest the reason we didn't win the game was perhaps because we disrupted our own rhythm against Pompey, no doubt l'd come in for plenty of stick. I really do think though that we run that risk if we select many more teams like Wednesdays one.

Last couple of points. No doubt a few people will pick up on my apparent sceptisism with regard to whether the players were carrying knocks or not. Cue the "why should we trust a dildo seller when we have the word of the clubs doctors to go on?". The answer is obviously that you shouldn't, I'm merely giving my opinion that there's knocks and there's knocks. Keane in particular was a disappointing omission for me, and should he be gazelling around the pitch at his old stomping ground at the weekend I won't be able to get away from the feeling that he should have played on Wednesday, and perhaps scored his first League goal.

The other point is goal difference. Cue the "it's far too early to even think about goal difference FFS!!!". To which the answer is, it may indeed be far too early for you to think about goal difference but it isn't for me. I am optimisitic that we we will be right in the hunt come the end of the season. We wouldn't be the first team over the last couple of seasons to finsish second as a direct result of having an inferior goal difference. Best to address it now rather than realise with six games to go that we need to win every match by a cricket score. There aren't many Besiktas's in the English Premier League unfortunately.

[JoeTerp]

If we name the exact same side against Spurs as we did against Chelsea than wont it be just as if they are caring that momentum from the Chelsea match and there was just an intense intrasquad friendly during midweek (only it was against pompey instead of other LFC players)

[JoeTerp]

Lucas game was dissapointing. He made some mistakes and after those he hadn't confidence in himself and played simple and dull.

However, I remember that when Alonso was coming back from injury, Lucas played well last season. It's not the same for a player to have games, then asked to perform, and perform, rather than keeping him in the bench for 7 games, and then ask him to perform.

That's why I think you cannot measure rotation in one game, but as a policy through out many games. One of the good sides of rotation is that you try to keep sharp more than the regular 14 players that usually participate in the team.

So, when, suddenly, you give 6 not regular players a game against Arsenal in the cup, a disaster might happen. And it happened.

Needless to say, if you play with fire, you drop 4 regulars, and you bring 4 non regulars who have not matches in their pocket and besides have less quality than the regulars, you have a worse game. So I agree the team selection was dangerous yesterday, but it's not a good example to criticise rotation as a policy.

This is why I think the biggest benefit of rotation is the improvement in the swuads ability to deal with injuries. 1) The fewer games you play the less chance of getting injured. 2) When you play fresher, you have an even greater chance of not getting injured 3) when players do get injured, its not that big a deal because their replacement will not be some new face to the starting XI, they will have had time in matches with the other ten players in 1st team games.