Watching the game today and the utterly disjointed performance, I couldn't help but cast my mind back to the first couple of months of last season when seemingly endless rotations of personel was one of the reasons for wild fluctuations in our levels of performance.
At the time many of us on here were pleading with Rafa, play your best team FFS and lets forget about rotating until we string a few results together and get the momentum rolling. Eventually, around the time of the Home game with West Ham Rafa seemed to concurr and consistency of selection was followed by consistency of results and performance. We climbed up the table, stopped conceding goals from set-pieces and everything seemed good again.
To be perfectly honest, the roots for todays display were actually sown IMHO in the lethargic and uninspiring Home display against Macabi Haifa. Failure to get a significant upper hand in that game never mind put the tie to bed meant that we had to hold some players back for Tuesday in the game today and ultimately paid the penalty.
I have always thought that the opening five minutes of any football match are crucial, not in that the most important goals are scored in that period but in that the declarations of intent are lodged here, the tempo set and the gauntlet thrown down. It seems that in the early part of last season and sofar in this (with the exception of the charity shield) we aren't getting out of the blocks early doors.
Ultimately, it is my contention that Warnock can tell his players as much as he likes to "believe in themselves" and to "fear nobody" etc etc, but deep inside their hearts the Sheffield Utd players would expect to lose to Liverpool. A fast start from the men in yellow would merely confirm this and you would end up with a situation where they would settle for a 2-0 defeat as being "not too bad" under the circumstances. If on the other hand it takes you twenty minutes to have a shot, half an hour to rouse yourself out of your slumber and the concession of the opening goal to fire you up then you run the risk of what happened to us today. Thank God for the referee because of course it wasn't a penalty and it could have been a whole lot worse.
In conclusion I hope we begin to pick at the very least the nucleus of our strongest team available so we can get the ball rolling. In all honesty part of me wishes that maybe Rafa could be a tad more gracious in situations like today, perhaps even accept that we were a tad fortunate with the award of the penalty kick. Having said that, maybe I'm just being a little old fashioned.