Liverpool FC Forum

fivecups wrote:We did the tests a couple of weeks ago and Ryan Babel was easily the fastest – even quicker than Fernando.

fivecups wrote:Who is the loudest in the squad?

I think that's Jamie Carragher! He's always shouting at people and telling them what to do on the pitch – it seems like you can hear him from everywhere. Sometimes he's so loud you just have to laugh about it.

Who has got the hardest shot?

When Riise was here it was definitely him, but now it must be Stevie Gerrard! Daniel Agger can really hit the ball hard and has scored some great goals for us, but I think Stevie just has more power.

Who is the best at FIFA 09?

Fernando Torres and Javier Mascherano play the FIFA games a lot on away trips, but I'm not sure who is the best! Hopefully they'll both let me get involved soon because I know I would be better than them!



Who's the cleverest?

Most people say footballers aren't very intelligent! It's hard to tell because we spend most of our time talking football, but I think Xabi Alonso is quite clever – at least he thinks he's clever anyway!

Who is the strongest?

The whole squad does weights a few times a week after training and Pepe Reina is the strongest. If there was a competition to see who could lift the most weights or do the most squats, Pepe would definitely win!



Who is your best mate?

I get on with all the lads, but I play golf with Pepe Reina and Albert Riera whenever I get the chance. Yossi Benayoun plays poker with us sometimes as well, so I probably spend the most time with them.

Who's the club DJ?

I don't want to big myself up but the lads always ask me to put my iPod on before games. It's probably because I'm the only one who has an iPod with me! I try to get a good mix of songs to keep everyone happy.

Who's the fastest?

We always do sprint tests at Liverpool so that's an easy one. We did the tests a couple of weeks ago and Ryan Babel was easily the fastest – even quicker than Fernando. I think he did athletics when he was younger.



Who is Mr Liverpool?

I think Carra knows everything – not only about Liverpool but about football in general. He eats and sleeps football and watches it every day, so he knows everything about the club. Steven Gerrard knows a lot about Liverpool too.

bavlondon wrote:Dirk?

ahhhh!    how stupid of me... it's in the dirk kuyt forum so it has to be dirk...

Lando_Griffin wrote:

bigmick wrote:Seriously I apologise to Kazza for the snidey nature of the post, but really. To say with a straight face that I was wrong about rotation just about takes the old biscuit, feck me how much proof does someone need .

'"Rafa-Style", changing the team, the formation and/or the positions which the players play in with the frequency and to the degree which Rafa does will never be successful in the English premier League...

... But when Ferguson does it and wins a treble, including the league, I'm still right...'

Could it possibly be things like this, Mick?

There are huge differences between the way Ferguson tries to do it, and the way Rafa was trying to do it.FWIW I'm far from convinced that Fergusons styling does them an awful lot of favours either, but in any case there are differences.

I've covered them at length in the previous 120 odd pages, but to be honest I'm amazed that people still refer back to a subject which has been so comprehensively proven in favour of one arm of the argument. When I banged on about us over-rotating, how changing the team 75 times in the first 15 matches was madness, how the delayed gazelle was a myth, how if we actually gave ourselves a chance then we had a team which was plenty good enough to challenge for the title I got allsorts.

On good days, people spent hours trying to convince me that it was an impossibility for us to challenge Manchester United for the title simply because they had more funds than us. On bad days, I copped the abuse of varying descriptions. If they were in a debating mood, they talked of how the fitness guru's said it was so that if you rested in November, it would magically manifest itself into improved performance with ten minutes to go for a game in May. When I argued that so many changes were disruptive to a patter, they told me it was nonsense because they could work on it on the training pitch.

And here we are five seasons later. After seeing the light, the manager in his words "changes the team much less" and we came very close to winning the title, infact should have won it. Manchester United having rested and protected the whole first team squad against Hull, go into the final with a heavily tinkered and styled line up, completely disrupting any fluency they have, and get mullered. Those same players who were rested against Hull look sh@gged after 20 minutes.

Perhaps the easiest way to look at it is this, a question. Do you want us to continue with the selection methodology we have employed for the last four months, along with the attacking mindset? Or would you on the other hand want to revert back to the uber styled formations and line-ups, along with the two holding midfielders?

If I was as wrong as the pro-rotationers were about this subject, I'd be keeping pretty quiet about it if it was me. Sometimes it's best just to admit you were wrong and let it go I reckon  .

bigmick wrote:Nobody is saying that if you have strength in depth it doesn't give changes to the team more chance of being successful. Fairly obviously, if Torres has a sore foot and you have to leave him out, replacing him with Samuel Eto is preferable to replacing him with David N'gog. I don't think anybody with a modicum of sense would dispute that.

It really comes back though to what you are actually trying to do. I've said a few times now, there seems little point to me in mass rotating the team every week, losing football matches and then saying "ah but it would have worked if we had better players" . You don't put Michael Owen up front on his own, rain high balls down on him, lose 4-0 and then say "ah but it would have worked if we still had Crouch". The simple fact of the matter is, if you haven't got adequate squad depth to replace like for like on a mass, week by week basis, don't do it then. If you think that by leaving BOTH Torres and Gerrard on the bench in an Away match is going to severely weaken you as you haven't got adequate replacements, don't do it then.

This "deeper squad" myth has taken over from "but you can't play the same team in every single game" as the urban tripe that nobody has ever said or denied, but is used to justify one side of a failed argument. Nobody has ever said you should play the same team in every single game, and nobody has ever said that if you replace your first teamers with good players as opposed to average ones it's not going to help. Of course it is.

Does that mean though that you should have as your objective a 28 man squad which rotates, fudges and nudges from week to week? An ever changing plethora of "options" and "possibilites" which changes each week depending on how deep teams defend when they come to Anfield, whether Stewart Downing plays for them, whether they sometimes put crosses in etc etc?

Not for me no. You have a plan and a pettern and you broadly stick to it. Equally, rather than spreading your transfer budget as thin as margarine on toast in order to fill your squad with these "options and possibilities" players, you concentrate what funds you've got and try and buy top players for the first team. Anybody who needs a blueprint to explain what I'm on about could do worse than look at us over the last three months of the season. If you want to see the difference it makes, allied to a more attacking mindset obviously, just compare it to the previous four and a half seasons. The last two of which, we had the same players achieving inferior results comparitively.

As I say, how anybody can deny what is so obvious it is written in six feet high letters made of day glo neon is a mystery to me, but there you go.

bavlondon wrote:I dont think its about how much the team is rotated Mick its about the quality of players that come in when rotation takes place. There is a gaping difference in quality with us and utd in that respect. We need our best 11 to get the 3 points week in week out. Utd didnt.