bigmick wrote:Sabre wrote:Now it looks like Alonso's not only have played below his standards, don't go up enough, his passing was poor and is far too easily marked with the oppo striker, but he's also responsible of Gerrard not playing that well due to the deterioration of his game. Maybe next week he'll be the real killer of John Kennedy.Come on Sabes, he wasn't even born when Kennedy was shot. Was he
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No seriously, I hope Xabi proves me wrong this season and returns to his very best. He is absolutley crucial to Lioverpool prospering, and if he were to regain his very top form, I'd have Gerrard back on the right in a shot with Sissoko restored back into the centre. Masherano in this instance wouldn't even get in the top three.
As for your comment about all the players getting plenty of games i sincerely hope this isn't true. Rafa needs to settle on his central pairing nice and early (and as we all know it'll be Xabi and Gerrard) and stick with it for a month or two to give the team time to bed down. None of this fecking around with it every week please.
Of course I was joking, or as I think you say, it was a tongue in cheek comment.
However, I can't bring you good news when it comes to the stop of using rotation. Giving a player a 5 year contract, or for that matter 4 year contract in the case of Sissoko isn't a sign of lack of confidence in the players. I hardly think that a man like Mascherano or Alonso will be warming the bench say, 2 or 3 weeks in a row.
IMHO we saw many games in the league last season in which we started with Zenden (!!) and Sissoko, not to mention that game we had lot of injuries and Carra played as a holding mid. That kind of midifield configurations are the ones that makes us lose points because other teams had men like Arteta, Benayoun that are as good as that. Of course we won't see games against Arsenal in which Guthrie, Paletta, and Dudek are the ones to win matches -- Dudek received his first defeat and 2 goals against PSV last day, BTW.
If instead of Zenden-Sissoko, we have a Mascherano-Sissoko, Alonso-Sissoko, or Alonso-Gerrard partnerships in the middle we'll win many games that we didn't use to win.
The bad news: we won't stop rotating.
The good news: We'll get much better results, and probably, we'll have a regular team for the league and the changes as in noticeable rotation will be introduced in cups and early Europe games.