I looked at that too in an earlier discussion St.Mick, and i can't really see when this 'wholesale change' thing that is so often written happened, most of the unforced changes were 2-3. The teams that played those early games last year were good enough to have won the games, the core players were there, BUT THE PLAYERS DID NOT PERFORM, and that includes Gerrard and Carra. What i don't like is players playing out of postion, Gerrard on the left FFS, that turn SG into an average player.
Rotation is going to happen, its Rafa's method, and it's needed, and even manu were doing it, eg. Ronaldo against the bitters, Rafa is always on about the need to have extremely fit players. Even taking that into account how often were SG, Alonso, Reina, Carra, Agger, Pennant and Finnan really rotated? , i think they all played around 50 games. Its the weaker players that were messed about with more, and this year we have one more player that should be a core 50 game player in Torres.