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.
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.