by bigmick » Sun Dec 09, 2007 5:02 am
I don't know mate, I don't go with this that he "gave up on the match". In actual fact our situation now reminds me a little of last season, where we are paying a heavy price for mistakes made earlier in the campaign. The earlier group stages of the Champions league fell right in the middle of our "blip", and while we were busy chopping and changing the team every week and desperately searching for some momentum, we of course lost Away at Besiktas and crucially, as Home against Marseilles. Becuase of this, we are in a predicament now which ws entirely avoidable in that we have to win our last game in the group away from home, and we are as a result having to sacrifice playing our best team in other games.
Those with good memories will remember the Macabi Haifa game at home in the Champions League qualifier of last season. There, we went with Bellamy on his own up front, a strange 4-5-1 and produced an entirely unconcing performance. Fortunately, in just about his only noteworthy contribution in Liverpool shirt Mark Gonzales got the winner in the dying seconds meaning we took a slender 2-1 lead into the away leg. As one thing led to another (football like life is kind of like that) we played a weakened team in the debacle of Bramhall Lane, similar to yesterday we settled for a result in the last half an hour which was less than what was needed, and subsequently took about six weeks to recover and by which time of course, any hopes of a challenge for the title were gone..
The roots of the Reading defeat were sown in that "blip" period, there are no doubts in my mind about that. there are lots of ways of "resting" players. One is sitting them on their erse before they go into crucial, make or break Champions League group games in a cauldron atmosphere on foreign shores. Another way is getting some early momentum and winning your first few group games so your not under any pressure to qualify. Then you can rest the whole team like Arsenal did in Seville. It's an interesting take on the same idea.
"se e in una bottigla ed e bianco, e latte".