Liverpool FC Forum

[112-1077774096]

cap doesnt fit here mate, you know i am right

[Leonmc0708]

it makes me laugh when people criticise those of us who criticised the result against Su, the bitters and cheslsea becuase we have now put 2 wins together.

yes its finally looking good and i hope that continues. but good results now will not get us back the 8 points dropped from those games. we are only 5 behind chelsea and that includes the 3 points they won of us.

every point is important at the end of the season and its not being fickle when we are disapointed, remember we still have to win more from now on than chelsea and man u so its not in our hands whether we win the title or not

Peewee, I am not sure if the military coup has clouded your usually sound judgement but you are off the mark on this mate.

The baton you weild "becuase we have now put 2 wins together" in relation to one swallow not making a summer is exactly the same perspective you should have used yourself when talking about our form.

The Derby defeat was our first in seventeen competitive games, (and dont let the season end break cloud your judgement either), just as football existed before 1992 and the advent of the Premier League, so the Liverpool team under Rafa existed before the seasons break.

Sheffield United was the kind of game you just dont wanna lose, no matter which way you look at it. Newly promoted team, first game of the season, early kick off, live on the box, it had banana skin written all over it, and to come away with a draw was a good result.

The Derby, was a classic example of the victory of mind over matter. The Everton players wanted it more than us, and instead of moaning about every decision like our boys did, they threw their bodies into another tackle or another block. However, when they were 2-0 up, we had our best passage of play of the season (until then) and where extremely unlucky not to have drawn level and gone on to get a posotive result. People coming oin here blaming Reina for a slip up when the game was already well and truly over where well wide of the mark. We lost many a derby to Everton in the late seventies and eighties and went on to lift the league.

The Chelsea game is the real reason I was prompted to have a dig at people, both on here and at the game. We completely bossed that match, and went down to a wonder goal when lady luck again deserted us. We played great football at times. Yet people came on here bemoaning hte performance. That is off the mark. If you come on and talk about bad luck then thats fine, or even sayign the result was the problem, but to say the performance was not up to standard is bollox.

On the comign from behind issue, I think its the only way we know how.

[112-1077774096]

leonn i agree with what you are saying mate, my argument is that i was not happy with the three results i mentioned, any liverpool fan should not be happy with those results.

it really does not matter how well we play and how many chances we create if we drop 8 points.

i dont think i have said we played poorly, i was critical of the rotation and i still beleive changing for the sake of changing is a bad idea and MAYBE we could have got more from those games.

but to call someone fickle or a fair weather fan for being unhappy with a result is not very fair.

can you honestly say that you are happy with 8 dropped points? of course you can look for the positives, but any positives you find will still not hide the fact that we dropped 8 points and as a supporter that makes me unhappy.

[Leonmc0708]

leonn i agree with what you are saying mate, my argument is that i was not happy with the three results i mentioned, any liverpool fan should not be happy with those results.

it really does not matter how well we play and how many chances we create if we drop 8 points.

i dont think i have said we played poorly, i was critical of the rotation and i still beleive changing for the sake of changing is a bad idea and MAYBE we could have got more from those games.

but to call someone fickle or a fair weather fan for being unhappy with a result is not very fair.

can you honestly say that you are happy with 8 dropped points? of course you can look for the positives, but any positives you find will still not hide the fact that we dropped 8 points and as a supporter that makes me unhappy.

We will NEVER get three points from every game, and we WONT win every game, so therfore rather than expecting the win, its better to draw posotives from a poor result than moan we never got three points.

[112-1077774096]

the three games i mention, only one i can draw positives from and thats the chelsea game where we were the better team, the other two we were poor. yes the everton game they wanted it more, i feel the same about the SU game and we seem to struggle when teams dont give us any time on the ball, we dont seem to battle sometimes which i dont really understand.

my big concern is that the most important game is the next game, i feel rafa has an eye on the game after that too much, like i have said before its no point saving palyers to win one game if it means we will struggle in another game.

just opinions leonn, i know we cant be expected to win every game, but i would much rather lose with a performance like at chelsea rather than the performance at everton

[bigmick]

I would have thought that most of us would consider it a near certainty that Liverpool will finish in the top four this season, so therefore it follows that we are going to win most of our games. For that reason, it would be unwise not to look at the areas where we dropped points and wonder if we did things correctly (while accepting of course that it's gone now and there's nothing you can do about it).

I've said a couple of times that we over-rotated at the start of the season and dug ourselves into a nice little hole. we fielded a ridiculously inderstrength team at home to Haifa and were extremely fortunate to get a narrow win. The knock-on effect of this was we had to "save" some of our better players in the return leg to make sure we qualified, and in so doing fielded the wrong team at Sheffield United and failed to win against a team that ALL of the other top teams will beat home and away.

Rafa said in an interview pre-match that while he believes in rotations, he accepts that sometimes he makes big mistakes. Unfortunately, this big mistake is one it's going to take us a while to recover from, and it's concieveable that the five point gap to a Chelsea team which hasn't really played that well yet may prove to be a bridge too far come the end of the season.

All that said, now we have stopped the daft selections and gone for a bit of consistency it's nice to see that the inevitable has happened and we are starting to play a bit better. Curiously, for the midweek Champions League game I would advocate a bit of rotation in that I think it's time Peter Crouch had a game. He was after all the hottest striker around until we successfully rotated him out of form.

[GOAT]

my big concern is that the most important game is the next game, i feel rafa has an eye on the game after that too much, like i have said before its no point saving palyers to win one game if it means we will struggle in another game.

Hm..  hasnt rafa been the one who has always said he tries to instill the mentality that the next game is the most important one? Its like you have robbed his words, then sold them off as your own telling him what he should be doing 

[112-1077774096]

my big concern is that the most important game is the next game, i feel rafa has an eye on the game after that too much, like i have said before its no point saving palyers to win one game if it means we will struggle in another game.

Hm..  hasnt rafa been the one who has always said he tries to instill the mentality that the next game is the most important one? Its like you have robbed his words, then sold them off as your own telling him what he should be doing 

read back through the forum mate and you will see me saying that even when ged was ruining our club.

does rafa really say that? if he says that why doesnt he also preach that?

[GOAT]

my big concern is that the most important game is the next game, i feel rafa has an eye on the game after that too much, like i have said before its no point saving palyers to win one game if it means we will struggle in another game.

Hm..  hasnt rafa been the one who has always said he tries to instill the mentality that the next game is the most important one? Its like you have robbed his words, then sold them off as your own telling him what he should be doing 

read back through the forum mate and you will see me saying that even when ged was ruining our club.

does rafa really say that? if he says that why doesnt he also preach that?

Yep i remember him saying that quite a few times, doesnt seem to use that way of thinking though

[112-1077774096]

exactly   

[Owzat]

just proves that if people base there opinions on what they hear on sky it will make them look stupid!!!!!

Sadly some people do base their opinions on what so called experts say.

We lost two games away from home, one against our fierce rivals and the other to a side which hasn't lost a home league match in two seasons. Now we've levelled up in terms of the number of home games and we're quite handily placed to pick off some of the sides above us and don't have the toughest match of the season still to come (Chelsea away)

Interestingly we have the best home record in the league, maybe only on goal difference but that's something to build on (fortress Anfield)

[Ace Ventura]

Leon the Sheffiled United game was not a good result.
We should be winning at places like that. They were up for it and obviously as the newly promoted team infront of there own fans we knew it would be difficult...thats why the team selected should have been our strongest...Zenden and Sissoko centre midfield ?
Rafa is a great manager but he either underestimated Sheffield United or overestimated the quality of some of our fringe players.
That performance aside we have played pretty well, and are improving every game.

[JC_81]

First of all I agree with those who are saying that we have played well this season apart from the Sheffield United game.  I also agree with those saying Benitez over-rotated in the early weeks of the season.  It's no coincidence that in the last 2 or 3 games we've played a more settled team, rotating fewer players, and results have picked up.  But I don't think that's the only reason, when you actually analyze the 2 league games we lost, luck was seriously against us.  Compare this with Jenas' miss yesterday and us then scoring 37 seconds later, luck certainly was on our side there.  These things will probably even themselves out over the course of the season.

I prefer to look at the bigger picture here.  We've won 3 of our first 6 league games, our new players are bedding down well, the team seems to be starting to convert performances into results now, and while Chelsea have got a 5 point lead on us already, it is certainly not an unassailable lead at this stage.  Look at this time last year - 1 win in the first 6 games, and a points deficit to Chelsea that we had no chance of clawing back.  We're in a far better position than we were 12 months ago and we've also got our customary Stamford Bridge defeat and an away derby out of the way.

We had a shaky start but things look to be moving in the right direction now.  And in some ways I expected our start to have been even shakier given the amount of new players we signed over the summer who I thought would take time to settle.  I'm also going to give a mention to Kuyt, he has looked the business so far, could be just the goalscorer we have been missing.

[Bad Bob]

On the issue of squad rotation (again), whilst I agree that some of Rafa's decisions early in the season look incorrect with the benefit of hindsight, I still contend that we had the quality on the pitch to see off each of our opponents.

TBH, the squad rotation yesterday was far more alarming to me.  Two of our recently settled back four swapped out--that's a very risky move!  With Spurs opting for pace and plenty of it up front, Rafa could have looked pretty foolish bringing Sami and and a potentially rusty JAR back into the frame.  Add to that a rare start for Gonzales on the left and you have some significant changes from previous matches.  But, because we won handily it is not something many people are mentioning.  In fact, Rafa is starting to be applauded for selecting a "settled" side!

I highlight this to illustrate how the "chopping and changing" label is very much in the eye of the beholder.  Rafa's changes in the last couple of matches have been on par with his rotation policy in the previous matches but the positive results have taken the focus off that hot button issue.  It's all very interesting!

[Ace Ventura]

On the issue of squad rotation (again), whilst I agree that some of Rafa's decisions early in the season look incorrect with the benefit of hindsight, I still contend that we had the quality on the pitch to see off each of our opponents.

TBH, the squad rotation yesterday was far more alarming to me.  Two of our recently settled back four swapped out--that's a very risky move!  With Spurs opting for pace and plenty of it up front, Rafa could have looked pretty foolish bringing Sami and and a potentially rusty JAR back into the frame.  Add to that a rare start for Gonzales on the left and you have some significant changes from previous matches.  But, because we won handily it is not something many people are mentioning.  In fact, Rafa is starting to be applauded for selecting a "settled" side!

I highlight this to illustrate how the "chopping and changing" label is very much in the eye of the beholder.  Rafa's changes in the last couple of matches have been on par with his rotation policy in the previous matches but the positive results have taken the focus off that hot button issue.  It's all very interesting!

Still cant see how Zenden can ever warrant a start at centre midfield...dont get me wrong if he plays i hope he does well. But he wont score many goals from that position...nor is he good enoughin the tackle, he may be neat and tidy in possesion...but so would one of our youth team players...not trying to slate Zenden....just the idea of playing him centre mid away in a game that was obviously going to be a dog fight