Avi Cohen wrote:I wish I had your confidence going into the Arsenal game, Wilhelmsson. I personally can't see us getting anything out of this game myself. Arsenal are on fire at the moment - and even if they weren't, we'd still make it easy for them. Why? Because Rafa won't pick at team that plays to Liverpool's strengths - he will pick a team he RECKONS will beat the other team. That's no way to run a club that hopes to win the league - leave that to Villa or Birmingham.
Sure Rafa knows what his best 11 is, but what he wants is 22+ interchangeable players and the end result is a lack of fluidity, confidence, individuality and desire in the team. Having played the game myself, albeit at a low level, we played the same 11 every week (no choice , but anyway...) and what I got used to is what the players in front of me was able to do. IE, I knew, out of habit, that our winger would always come inside. Now, if I know this I can prepare if he loses the ball and adjust my position accordingly. It becomes instinct, second-nature - you do it without thinking about it.
That can't happen with Rafa's team because the team is not playing with each other for more than two games running. Some posters here say 'He only changed once in the last two weeks' or some W*nk like that, but it has a cumulative effect - you can't expect everything to click into place because he's played more or less the same team in a row. This has to be done over months and seasons (bar injury and form).
We're not doing the basics of football right - control, passing and movement. These players are professional footballers. It's almost in their genetic make-up at this stage to control, pass and move with relative ease because they've been doing it all their lives - and some cases that's all they've done. They live and breathe football. I fear that they're not asked to be footballers - they're asked to be a cog in a machine - that's no way to play football.
I just want to see Liverpool playing some decent football for a change. Is that too much to ask?
This is not disrespecting the teams that Arsenal have faced so far, but none of the teams they have played yet have been anywhere near them in terms of quality. Liverpool will be Arsenal’s first stern test and I am not convinced that Arsenal will be able to play with the same finesse and fortune against LFC than they have against the likes of Spurs, Slavia Prague etc.
The clubs fortunes have to change somewhere, so why not against Arsenal? I share you concern about the way in which Rafa selects his teams; I feel that more often than not, Rafa selects his team based on the opposition’s strengths and weaknesses, not the strengths of Liverpool, I naively hope he’ll change this one day, but I can dream can’t I?
FWIW, even if Rafa selects a team based on who he feels is capable of beating Arsenal, I can’t see this having a large impact on the overall result. If the team wins then Rafa was spot on with his team selection and if the team loses, then Rafa called it wrong, that’s generally the jist of things around here.
I share your concerns about the size of the squad and the fact that Rafa wants to use twenty two interchangeable players, but I feel Rafa can use a large enough squad effectively providing he use pragmatism in his rotation and not the rotation he has been implementing so far. As for the second nature aspect of your post, it’s spot on IMO, but even you must realise it’s impossible to play the same eleven every week, sometimes there are three matches a week, you can’t honestly expect the same team to play in each of the matches. This is where rotation becomes useful IMO.
You make valuable points and points that I accept and share, we’ll both have to wait and see how things pan out, but what I want is winning football first and attractive football second, if both can be combined, then wonderful, if not then as long as the team is winning then I couldn’t careless.
