Rotation - nice line from Bascombe

[ronan]

pronounced howton over here
he is a tit though
read somewhere that man u and ourselves had made the exact same no of changes last year ,185 each.
its just something to keep the media amused
same as zonal marking was a couple of seasons ago
reina winning most clean sheets twice in a row soon put paid to that(something that was swept under the carpet in media terms)

[rushscored4]

pronounced howton over here. he is a tit though

But he was born in Glasgee... And yes, he is a dork. Or dowk if you prefer!

read somewhere that man u and ourselves had made the exact same no of changes last year ,185 each.

Wasn't it 118 changes according to the Tomkins article on leftpeg's link above from the Offal?

[irishgeo]

ray is ****, but giles knows his stuff, dunphy just opens his mouth to say something smart,but i take themall, to the england loving guys i have to put up with when i watch sky,bbc or itv.

Everything is gerrard and england, carragher and england, world cup and england.

I be thinking are Liverpool playing here or england. Shearer really gets up my nose.

[theriotact]

The england bias gets a bit dull but they are english tv stations mate.

[Joe Le Toff]

I think you will have certain people who have a very traditional way of looking at the way football was and will never understand / accept the notion of squad rotation / resting players / zonal marking etc & will never change their minds, no matter what factual evidence is available to back it up

[bazza76]

In his match report today, he included the line - "Once everyone gets their head around the basic maths that being involved in 40 games out of 60 games in a Liverpool team chasing four trophies is preferable to playing in 40 out of 40 for a club fighting on no fronts..."

Absolutely

Even Sam Allardyce said something similar in support of Rafa's policy at the weekend. It was along the lines of "I've only got 40 games to worry about so there's no need to rotate. Rafa has 60 to worry about".

All succesful clubs have to rotate to some extent to keep the squad happy and to rest the top players ahead of big games. The trick is to have quality players to rotate in when needed and so far it looks like we've got that this season.

Now we just need someone to do a statistical analysis of how our defending at corners and free-kicks compares with other top sides, and hopefully we can stop the obsession with rotation and zonal defending that ITV diplayed in their commentary last night.

Them quotes are all well and good.
But I will say one thing. We will have to win something big this year to make this squad feel it was all worth while. With a squad like we have now, we should be doing exactly that. Otherwise we will have players, possibly like Lucas, and Mascherano and Crouch questioning why they stayed.