Liverpool FC Forum

[Sabre]

The most worrying bit is that it's the same muscle of the previous injury.

I've been thinking and worrying about that too. Really hope this doesn't turn out to be a "Owen-situation" with the same injury occuring again and again  .

Exactly what I was thinking    .

If it made a difference I'd rather Torres was rested for a month or more if necessary and then come fully recuperated, instead of being rushed back asap only to be out again some weeks later.

Don't follow that path or we may be discussing about rotation again 

To be honest, you never know what may be the reason for having that injury again. The pitch condition wasn't the best, the training exercises change in the Spanish team, so we can't say for sure Torres wasn't recovered enough, that is, I don't think the club nor the player had concerns at all about that muscle at this point.

[LFC2007]

The most worrying bit is that it's the same muscle of the previous injury.

I've been thinking and worrying about that too. Really hope this doesn't turn out to be a "Owen-situation" with the same injury occuring again and again  .

Exactly what I was thinking    .

If it made a difference I'd rather Torres was rested for a month or more if necessary and then come back fully recuperated, instead of being rushed back asap only to be out again some weeks later.

Agreed.

You can see the similarity in movement between the two which seems to make them more prone. He's exactly the type of player that typically suffers from the problem on a regular basis, and that's my main worry. I don't know what his injury history was at Atletico??

If it's of any benefit to rest him for a week or two extra, or to prolong his introduction to full training, it would be worth it long-term. I fear that he's just prone to this type of injury because of his movement, and that it hasn't necessarily recurred because of a lack of recuperation time.

There may be something in what Sabre said too. The change in preparation techniques and the quality of the pitch in Belgium may have contributed to the problem.

[Fo Dne]

The most worrying bit is that it's the same muscle of the previous injury.

I've been thinking and worrying about that too. Really hope this doesn't turn out to be a "Owen-situation" with the same injury occuring again and again  .

Exactly what I was thinking    .

If it made a difference I'd rather Torres was rested for a month or more if necessary and then come back fully recuperated, instead of being rushed back asap only to be out again some weeks later.

Agreed.

You can see the similarity in movement between the two which seems to make them more prone. He's exactly the type of player that typically suffers from the problem on a regular basis, and that's my main worry. I don't know what his injury history was at Atletico??

If it's of any benefit to rest him for a week or two extra, or to prolong his introduction to full training, it would be worth it long-term. I fear that he's just prone to this type of injury because of his movement, and that it hasn't necessarily recurred because of a lack of recuperation time.

There may be something in what Sabre said too. The change in preparation techniques and the quality of the pitch in Belgium may have contributed to the problem.

He didn't have a bad injury record in Spain judging by the stats and that may stand us in better stead than with Owen as the muscle's should have already grown without previous disruption. Basically they should heal better as Owen was still growing when suffering his problems.

It is however worrying and If I'm honest, I'd be looking to leave him out for a month now and only have him on the bench for the Chelsea game, which lets face it, isn't a game we expect to win anyway.

[LFC2007]

Good point.

[Rockthekop]

We can't rely on Torres and Gerrard all the time, we need a few more quality players in the squad to step up when our big guns get injured.

Chelsea are the perfect example.  Long injury list but they have quality players to replace everyone bar Drogba.

[Igor Zidane]

So just for arguements sake and this could happen . If Torres is deemed fit after 7 days say . Are we advercating resting (styling if you will ) him for a big away game against one of our rivals for the League . If he is rested and we lose , how many feckers on here are going to call Rafa fit to burn , oh god i can just see it now .

Not that i'm disagreeing with what stu is saying , but you can see where i'm coming from .

[GYBS]

Lots of people will Igor.

[maguskwt]

why don't we expect to win against chelsea? if we wanna challenge for the title, we need to expect to win every game... we played the mancs off the park didn't we? have some faith ffs...

[Santa]

hmmm...stu isn't expecting us to get a positive results at Chelsea...might as well just settled for 4th spot again then!

[SupitsJonF]

hmmm...stu isn't expecting us to get a positive results at Chelsea...might as well just settled for 4th spot again then!

Mancs drew Chelsea, so if we draw Chelsea we are joint 4th?  (Not in the tables now, at the end)

[Fo Dne]

So just for arguements sake and this could happen . If Torres is deemed fit after 7 days say . Are we advercating resting (styling if you will ) him for a big away game against one of our rivals for the League . If he is rested and we lose , how many feckers on here are going to call Rafa fit to burn , oh god i can just see it now .

Not that i'm disagreeing with what stu is saying , but you can see where i'm coming from .

I can see where you're coming from, but when you have a player like Torres he has to be protected and allowed to fully recover from any injury. We don't want another Michael Owen situation were we've got one of the worlds best players who loses his main assest and goes from becoming a world class player in the elite to a top class player.

[Effes]

I remember Arsenal at home last season when Torres had said he was fit, only to be pulled off by Rafa.

Rafa wasn't too pleased with him then; it could be the case that Rafa keeps him out longer than he wishes,
just to be on the safe side.

[europian-kings]

with torres missing the chelsea game i hope beniyioun plays a part, weather it be off keane or anywhere, rememebr swurving run that led to the torres goal in cl last season against chelsea...

[bigmick]

IT MIGHT ACTUALLY BE AN IDEA FOR THE MODERATORS TO MOVE THIS INTO THE ROTATION THREAD. It does actually mention some rotational concepts, and no doubt there will be some accusations of me "spamming the forum" and ruining threads by constantly mentioning rotation.








I can't help thinking that people are allowing themselves to get a little confused here about what is and isn't "rotation", and what actually constitutes "styling".

It isn't rotation to not play a player who is injured. Nobody ever said it was. If Torres is injured he shouldn't play. Not that difficult to understand that one really.

Similarly, it isn't "styling" to give him sufficient rest time to recover from his injury. That's common sense.

Rotation is when you tinker with the team from game to game, revolving the personel willy-nilly in order to "keep them fresh" and in some cases to preserve their sharpness for big games at the end of the season. This latter concept is the delayed gazelle theory, that a player has a milometer stored within him and if he spends half an hour less on the pitch in October, it magically gets stored up in sharpness points and reappears with ten minutes to go in the Champions League semi.

"Styling" is or was Rafa's particular brand of rotation. As anybody will tell you, "but all managers rotate" and some of the sillier ones will tell you "but you can't play the same team in every single game". Because of that, we had to make a distinction between normal "wear and tear" on the first team, and constant alterations to the personel, the positions in which personel played in, and the overall team formation which constituted "Rafa style". 

So I hope that clears it all up. If Torres is injured and doesn't play, it's not rotation and it isn't Rafa style.



Two things about the saga don't surprise me. Firstly, the fact that people have seemingly already forgotten the dizziness and the concepts have become a bit blurred. in many ways it's a good thing. We've dropped it of course after four seasons, and have made our best start to the Premiership on record and are joint top of the league. It could of course just be coincidence, or "nothing to do with rotation" as it it wasn't when we fell into a hole of dizziness season after season, or on the other hand there might actually be something in it. Who knows?

The second thing which doesn't surprise me is the almost unmentioned but quietly implied notion that perhaps Torres's injury could be because of a lack of rotation. If only we'd rested the poor fecker. If we were to go with that premise though, we would need to forget last season where we "rotated" and "styled" Torres in the Pompey Away game (I won't count Birmingham at Home in the following league game because they defend deep and as we know Torres can't play against teams who do that). 'Course as we all know, despite being rotated/styled against Pompey, and left out for tactical reasons ( sorry) against Birmingham, he did of course get injured two weeks later.

No, it's a shame that rotation got brought into this discussion really. It simply doesn't hold water that's it's a cause, nor does it seem sensible to consider it as a concept during Torres's rehabilitation. Football is a simple game, he's injured and we need to make sure he recovers, that's it really.

[LFC2007]

You advocated resting him against Birmingham.