Rafa the tinkerman

[Bob]

Greece are the European champions and as for Jamaica, you can only beat (or score against) whoever is put in front of you. Crouch's stats for England are 8 in 12, and a good portion of those 12 appearances were as a sub.

Whichever way you look at it, his international record is impressive. Also, his record throughout 2006, thus far, must be pretty bloody good. He's consistently scored goals for club and country.

FFS Shaggy, Greece may well be European champions though they never turned up that night (they're actually not that good when they do turn up). The worst defence England came up against for a helluva long time.Crouch had about 6-7 chances in that game.

Besides, Pauletta has about 50 goals in 90 odd games, and he's pish.

[leftpeg]

This may seem like a daft question, but just because Rafa only publicly reveals his team an hour or so before the match (in this instance according to UEFA regulations), does this really mean that he hasn't told the players themselves? Or does it just mean it isn't public knowledge?

[kurtangle01]

This may seem like a daft question, but just because Rafa only publicly reveals his team an hour or so before the match (in this instance according to UEFA regulations), does this really mean that he hasn't told the players themselves? Or does it just mean it isn't public knowledge?

i would have thought that the players and staff would know of his decision a good 2-3 hours before a ball is kicked.

[JermainePennant]

i think it is obvious rafa is going to roatate a lot this season he has two players in nearly every position and he hasnt signed them just to cover injures.I saw him say somewhere that at valencia that he was able to chop and change and it didnt affect the team and he wanted a squad strong enough to do this.

When he wins there will be no problems but if he changes the team and loses he will get criticised,i dont know how succesful we will be changing the team around a lot but I think Rafa will rotate a lot this season.

[bacon]

He was successful in Spain with Valencia. Did he rotate the players in that team much ? Anyone know that ?

[kurtangle01]

He was successful in Spain with Valencia. Did he rotate the players in that team much ? Anyone know that ?

i'm not sure if he did to be honest. perhaps someone else could clarify that for us. my main concern is that last season we had a settled side and rafa change 1 or 2 a week at the most unless we had an inury or 2.

we are a better side when the team selection is consistent IMHO and i'm certain we'd have beaten haifa easily with last seasons team but this season there seems to a bit more chopping and changing.

hopefully as the season progresses we will see more consistency in terms of selection.

[alunevans]

it may simply be that as many have had shortened pre seasons that players are not yet at full fitness, so he needs to rotate in the short term. i still feel that we're in pre season fitness wise. hopefully we'll have a more settled side once everyone is firing on full cylinders.

with injuries and the world cup etc its been a very stunted pre season and i think thats having an impact on his thinking.

[Mattshark]

i'm not sure if he did to be honest. perhaps someone else could clarify that for us. my main concern is that last season we had a settled side and rafa change 1 or 2 a week at the most unless we had an inury or 2.

we are a better side when the team selection is consistent IMHO and i'm certain we'd have beaten haifa easily with last seasons team but this season there seems to a bit more chopping and changing.

hopefully as the season progresses we will see more consistency in terms of selection.

See my earlier post which covers just about everything.

[friedk]

I think the many changes to the side is a direct result of the World Cup. We are still short of match fitness and that will take a time to come right. When you only have 2 weeks of pre-season training, you are not ready for 2 games a week, let alone the world's most meaning international a few days before the start of the seaon.

We are only likely to see a settled squad when all players are ready, which will take a while. That's why we have a big squad. I was speaking to a Manc supporter and he was really amazed at the size and quality of our squad. As an example, a year ago if we had injuries to Riise & Carra, the replacements would have been Warnock & Traore.

[Don Quixote]

Tinkerman?

Rafa is a funny one, isn't he. I'm not going to say he's got it all wrong or all right or anything stupid like that. He does extremely well really, on one hand. On the other hand, it often seems like he hasn't got a clue what to do, so he experiments with all available options until he finds the best solution.

That being said, if this *lack of vision* makes him a bit stupid in any way, what is distinctly MORE stupid is those people (pundits and then by proxy, fans) coming out banging on with that cliched nonsense about sticking to the same team all the time and then magically we'll be ace. Honestly, the mind boggles.

Last season our good run came with us SETTLING players in certain positions. And obviously, before you can do that, you have to know what your best options are. It's not as simple as to say, "stop tinkering and we'll be ok." This is compounded by a few things:

-Lack of fitness at the start of the season
-One off decent performances
-And, especially for Rafa, new players who aren't quite clued up with his tactics yet.


At the beginning of last season we were playing Garcia on the right, Warnock at left back, Riise at left mid and Gerrard in the hole. Every idiot and his dog were posting "My XI"s along these lines. Despite this, on the pitch, it was RUBBISH, although not many people were able to see exactly why it was wrong because as far as they were concerned these were reasonable places for these players to be playing.

When Morientes got fit and played in the hole, Kewell got fit and played on the left wing, Warnock was dropped at left back and Riise put back there (where he belongs), and finally Gerrard put roaming from the right THEN we went on a great run. There was balance to the team and Rafa didn't want to change it all the time.

After a while it became obvious that Garcia and Fowler were better options than Morientes in the traditional No.10 role and because of the need to rest players etc there was some degree of rotation.

My point is, that Rafa's best XI* by the time we knocked Chelsea out of the FA Cup would have seemed crazy to some people at the beginning of the season and to Rafa it was just one of a plethora of different possibilities he needed to try in order to know how good it would actually be.


*
---------Crouch
---Kewell Garcia Gerrard
------Alonso Sissoko
Riise Hyypia Carragher Finnan
-----------Reina

Consequently, all this banging on about playing the same team etc is just bovine drivel because the team you think we should play is probably not all that near to the team we should be playing if we were to somehow currently have the benefit of future hindsight.

[Resu]

Are you friedk?

[Don Quixote]

Nope, off KT my username is "robinhood".

If that's what you are asking me.

[Fierce]

Nope, off KT my username is "robinhood".

If that's what you are asking me.

And SCM? Whats it like over there? Not sure I can be arsed registering for any other LFC forums, this one will probably suffice

[Rich]

Merged threads - remarkably similar content!

[Don Quixote]

And SCM? Whats it like over there? Not sure I can be arsed registering for any other LFC forums, this one will probably suffice

Well, as 6CM has all the best posters from the downstairs KT, it is therefore the site with the best banter.