Liverpool FC Forum

[66-1112520797]

I missed out the word 'necessarilly' and I get pounced upon.

 
Why call other peoples spelling especially when your spelling is not necessarily perfect

lol... now it seems like i have to type my post in microsoft word first and do a spell check before i copy and paste here...

Nah mate dont worry about your spelling, most people round here arent so anal, except the one newbie in particular.

What a life the poor lad must have, correcting peoples spelling, he done it with Stu I remember that too.

The lad is a sad excuse of an exsistance, probably bullied at school, I bet he hates Monday's .


PS. Sorry about ruining a decent thread people, hopefully it can get back on track.

[Bad Bob]

After yet another flame war, Bamaga Man and LFC2007 finally recognize that their mutual contempt was really just over-compensation for a deep-seated and white hot mutual attraction.  Following this epiphany, they both agree to give the "arm around the shoulder" approach a chance:





(Just a joke, fellas, but, seriously, can you try ignoring each other's posts for a while before things escalate and the cards start flying?   )

[66-1112520797]

After yet another flame war, Bamaga Man and LFC2007 finally recognize that their mutual contempt was really just over-compensation for a deep-seated and white hot mutual attraction.  Following this epiphany, they both agree to give the "arm around the shoulder" approach a chance:





(Just a joke, fellas, but, seriously, can you try ignoring each other's posts for a while before things escalate and the cards start flying?   )

Seriously Though Bob I would ignore him if he wasnt so condencending towards me and others at times.

[Wilhelmsson]

"At times last season from what i was observing Rafa seemed to be rotating for the sake of rotation" , explain please.

It’s hard to explain something when it already has been narrowed down to its simplest form. The quote you have highlighted shows my confusion by some of Rafa’s rotation decisions.

For example there were times last season where I felt that Kuyt was a liability in certain matches and Crouch should have taken his place. Then the next match Crouch would play and score and then Crouch would be dropped to bench immediately afterwards.

It’s hard for me to remember all decisions last season, but the one that stands out to me is taking off Mascherano in CL final and introducing Crouch (our main goal threat last season) too late into the match.

These small decisions to me highlight the small fact that Rafa feels the need to keep morale high within the dressing room, to keep players content. How does Rafa achieve this? He achieves it by swapping players here and there, so each player gets near enough equal playing time.

[LFC2007]

 
Why call other peoples spelling especially when your spelling is not necessarily perfect[/quote]
Typo, big difference between that and outright stupidity.

[LFC2007]

Why call other peoples spelling especially when your spelling is not necessarily perfect

Because he is a self opinionated w@nker Saint, and would much prefer to correct peoples spelling, and be a condecending tw@t at the same time, than talk football as he feels he's obviously better at that.

Still bitter?

[LFC2007]

I missed out the word 'necessarilly' and I get pounced upon.

 
Why call other peoples spelling especially when your spelling is not necessarily perfect

lol... now it seems like i have to type my post in microsoft word first and do a spell check before i copy and paste here...

Nah mate dont worry about your spelling, most people round here arent so anal, except the one newbie in particular.

What a life the poor lad must have, correcting peoples spelling, he done it with Stu I remember that too.

The lad is a sad excuse of an exsistance, probably bullied at school, I bet he hates Monday's .


PS. Sorry about ruining a decent thread people, hopefully it can get back on track.

Yes, still bitter. 

[66-1112520797]

I missed out the word 'necessarilly' and I get pounced upon.

 
Why call other peoples spelling especially when your spelling is not necessarily perfect

lol... now it seems like i have to type my post in microsoft word first and do a spell check before i copy and paste here...

Nah mate dont worry about your spelling, most people round here arent so anal, except the one newbie in particular.

What a life the poor lad must have, correcting peoples spelling, he done it with Stu I remember that too.

The lad is a sad excuse of an exsistance, probably bullied at school, I bet he hates Monday's .


PS. Sorry about ruining a decent thread people, hopefully it can get back on track.

Yes, still bitter. 

Still here. 

[bigmick]

I'm obviously really pleased we've started well, only a calamitous refereeing decision preventing us from having a league and cup 100% record. I'm more than a little concerned however that the wrong conclusions may be drawn from our last couple, and our next one result.

Already, the pro-rotationers are getting carried away because we made a stack of changes against Toulouse and still won comfortably. We also made a couple of changes against Sunderland and comfortably prevailed so what's the problem, surely it just proves Rafa was right all along? I'll tell you what, we'll make a load more changes on Saturday against Derby and we'll win again very comfortably. So rotation is working eh Mick 

Well lets get a couple of things straight here. Firstly, Sunderland and Toulouse are very poor teams. Derby on Saturday are a very poor team and Rafa could put Stu the Red up front and we'd probably still win. He could make eight changes from Toulouse and we'd probably still win. Does it prove that mass rotation is the way to go? No, it just proves that these are poor teams.

FWIW I thought and indeed think that Rafa has almost learned his lesson. The selection at Sunderland was mostly sensible (only Babbel for Riise being a typical "Rafaism") but Toulouse at Home was a bit more concerning.

This is what really bothers me. Once we've made half a dozen changes for the Derby game and still won comfortably, will Rafa remember that he played the same team for the first two games? Will he remember that in order to prevail at venues such as Fratton Park you need a team which is fully tunes up, not just players that are honed and ready to go, but a TEAM that is fully tuned up and together?

I've read a couple of times that now the squad is stronger than last season we should be able to rotate without weakening the team so much. The squad is indeed stronger particularly with the introduction of Torres, but by no means to the degree some are indicating (as I've said many times it was strong enough to launch a title push last season as well). The reality is though, even if you replace like with like ability wise, (and Alonso and Masherano would appear to be a perfect example) you still weaken the team by constantly doing so as the other players don't get chance to form a cohesive alliance with that player.

I'm very concerned firstly that we will convince ourselves that selectorial silliness is Ok again by virtue of the fact that we are able to beat substandard teams with what amounts to our reserve eleven. I also hope that the fact that we aren't using these "warm-up" fixtures against the lesser lights to prepare for the bigger battles to come won't come back to haunt us. Sensible rotation is OK (and with Gerrard and Carragher both being out, that's pretty much enough rotating for me TBH) but please no tinkering.

We need to remember that though swapping like for like sounds OK in theory, it won't work. Footballers come in individual packages, but together they form a team. Ultimately, it's the best one of those which will win the league, and not a bunch of rested individuals.

Well I did come on here after a good performance when Rafa had rotated and took some humble pie so perhaps it's only fair to dredge up an old comment.

The selection was wrong against Portsmouth and pretending otherwise is just being silly frankly. It wasn't the only reason the team didn't function, and it is probably fair to assume that we still had enough quality on the pitch to prevail but it was wrong all the same.

Would we have been more likely to win the game with either Torres or Gerrard or both on from the start? Would Rafa go with the same team with the benefit of hindsight? Posters will know the answers the same as Rafa and it isn't being fickle or disloyal to point out the glaringly obvious. Neither is it being daft to admit we were actually very fortunate to draw the game in the end.

Thankfully we've made a good start in the other games and Portsmouth aren't Sheffield United so drawing the game isn't a disaster this early in the campaign. It is fair to say though that both Man Utd and Arsenal picked up three points in games which were much more difficult than the one we faced, and had you asked messers Wenger and Ferguson to pick Liverpools team for their own benefit, you can bet they'd have left Torres and Gerrard out of the team too.

I said a couple of weeks ago I was worried this would happen and hopefully now it has, we can revert to common sense. For the seven million, two hundred and fourteen thousand, six hundred and third time THIS DOESN'T MEAN PICKING THE SAME TEAM IN EVERY SINGLE GAME. I'm going to repeat that, THIS DOESN'T MEAN PICKING THE SAME TEAM IN EVERY SINGLE GAME. What it does mean, is picking from the same core of players. If Kuyt and Torres are our first choice strike partnership (and selections so far would indicate they are) then surely at least one of them should start the game barring injury? If Gerrard and Torres are our most potent attacking weapons (and forgive me for being presumtious but I'm assuming everyone agrees with that) then at least one fo them should start.

Not the same team in every single game, but not selectorial silliness either. Hoefully, we've learned our lesson today and we can remember back to the opening couple of games of the season.

One last question. Had we have played the same team we played the same team we played against Portsmoth in the Villa and Chelsea games, would we have got as many points? Just wondering as a couple ofweeks ago people seemed convinced that changing the team didn't overly weaken it.

[LFC2007]

We may well have been more likely to win the game had we played Gerrard, Kuyt and Torres to begin with, or at least one of them. Would we have won the match had one, or all of those been playing? It's not as safe an assumption as some are making out IMO.

It comes back to the standard argument about rotation essentially, if these players had knocks, were jaded or fatigued is it worth taking the risk? Will those two points be picked up somewhere down the line as a result of this rotation policy?

I think we should have at least played one of Torres or Gerrard, but, other than that we were capable of winning with the team Rafa selected IMO.

I don't think we saw selectorial silliness today.

The balance was wrong, but the players did not perform to anything like the levels they can. There has to be shared responsibility for the performance.

[AB's Red Army]

I agree with those sentiments. We played practically the same side against Sunderland and scored 2 goals. The players did what needed to be done to win.

Today that wasn't the case.

The international break imo took the sting out of our start. You can call it an excuse if you want but in previous seasons we always played poorly afterwards.

[LFC2007]

I don't know when the next int'l break is, but it would be interesting to see who we play afterwards, whether it is home, away and when the kick off time is.

[AB's Red Army]

I don't know when the next int'l break is, but it would be interesting to see who we play afterwards, whether it is home, away and when the kick off time is.

After the next international break we play

1. Everton away
2. early kick off

The same happened last season and we were terrible.

[stmichael]

As I was explaioning to Lynds earlier in the rotation thread, it really does my head in when people spout the same old sh#te week in week out with little regard for what mitigating factors could be affecting the managers decision. It seems to me that certain posters refuse to take a pragmatic or objective view of team selections and instead choose to adopt a highly critical view of Rafa, instaed of criticising the players who just didn't produce anything like what they're capable of.

My views on this subject are pretty much known to everyone, nobody is above criticism least of all Rafa, but the fact remains, the 11 players we fielded today where more than capable of winning the game. Too many players either had an off day today. I don't think James had a shot to save in the second half, however if Voronin had got his toe to that one near the end we wouldn't even be having this conversation andf everything would still be hunky dory.

The hysterical delirium that greeted the hiding we dished out to a very poor Derby was a precursor to the very thing that's happening on this forum now. Perspective is the name of the game. FFS, we're still ahead of Man U and Chelsea in the table with a game in hand and we've got some favourable fixtures coming up against the likes of Birmingham and Wigan.

Chelsea dropped two more points today. More points will be taken off the top 4 this season than in any other season. It's not the end of the world.

[AB's Red Army]

I think at times our players get away with performances. Instead Rafa alone takes the heat for their utterly lethargic performances like the one today.