Liverpool FC Forum

Avi Cohen wrote:Hi everyone

I've been quiet about posting as the season ran down because the last thing we need is another miserable person posting negative stuff. So I decided to kick off the summer with a negative post

Why I don't want Rafa at the club next season...

1. I don't like his football.
Does anybody? We showed in the run in of the 08-09 that we can play attractive and exciting football when he takes the shackles off... but Rafa's Type 1 style is caution.
We are Liverpool, we can't be worrying about what Stoke are going to do to us at Anfield. I can't stand the way he sets his team out to stop the other team playing first - he kicks off matches in a wait-and-see style and then tries to up the pace. This is hard for players - if you set the right tone from the outset it's easier to maintain, rather than asking the players to kick up into a higher gear.
If you count 4 defenders, two defensive midfielders and a right winger that is only there to stop their left back getting forward, that's 70% of our outfield team sent out to stop the opposition from playing. That's not good enough.

2. Transfers
Rafa's success/failure has been talked up before so I won't get into it here. What I want to get into is the idea that a lack of transfer funds has proved his undoing, that it's the yanks' fault we're in this position.
Well, that's a yes and a no. What I'm afraid is if Rafa is with us next season and he's given money for players that it won't be  a question of who he can get, but how he will play them? Will he buy a top/potential striker and play him on the wing? Or if he speaks out of turn he'll find himself on the bench?

3. His inability to learn from his mistakes.
Everyone could see in pre-season that the Masch-Lucas partnership wasn't working but he stuck with it.
- he stuck with it when we were dumped out of the title race before it was even half over.
- he stuck with it when we were dumped out of the Carling Cup at the first time of asking.
- he stuck with it when we were knocked out of the FA Cup in our first game.
- he stuck with it when we didn't qualify from the group stages in the CL.
This is just insanity. What if he's here next season and things aren't going well? I'll tell you - they won't go well for the whole season because Rafa won't change it.

4. Favouritism
Despite players playing well below par, Rafa has an inner mafia that do his bidding and he sticks with a small core of players whose ability is detrimental to success.

5. The graveyard of creativity.
This is the most important aspect. When I look at the potential of players coming to the club only to be thwarted by Rafa's style, it angers me.
- Lucas was the Brazlian Young Footballer of the Year. How can he go from that to this?
- Kuyt was banging in goals left, right and centre in the Dutch league and now he can't score for love nor money.
- Babel was hailed as a promising talent and now look.
Pennant and Arbeloa have recently come out damning Rafa's tactics - that the same 123 in training is the same 123 in a match.
I understand that not every transfer turns out to be the next Torres, but this is happening too many times for it to be a blip.

6. His dogged refusal to shake things up.
4-5-1. Every game. Home and away. Regardless of how we're playing. This makes us very easy to predict and defend against. Will he change it? No. Why? Because he would reckon that he shouldn't - he's won La Liga (twice), Uefa Cup, CL and FA Cup playing 4-5-1 so the system works. If it doesn't work, the players aren't doing EXACTLY what he wants.
But football isn't an EXACT sport - there are a lot of X factors that can't be accounted for. A good manager would see what is not working and change things. Rafa's refusal to do so and his like-for-like substitutions (always at the same time) render Liverpool a one-trick club. Any manager worth his salt can prepare easily to play against us as he knows exactly what we're going to do. He could even predict what player will come on at 70mins.
There is no Plan B. How can you not have a Plan B working in top class football?

(I've a theory that Torres' injuries are coming from him doing the dogwork up front on his own. If he had someone to take some of the heat and the knocks he wouldn't find himself as injured as many times as he is. It's just a theory.)