Silly poll of the week

[paulcooper4]

It appears I can

Just the 10000 fella?

[Dan]

respect to Mick

[MrMichael]

Just the 10000 fella?

I'm voting by proxy for all the lurkers and unregistered visitors.

If I'm going to abuse my powers again I might as well do it properly.

[Dan]

It is ok if I call you Mick then or should we be more formal?

[livvy145]

That's all we need, a mod with a sense of humour.



Can I change my vote?

[MrMichael]

It is ok if I call you Mick then or should we be more formal?

lol. I'd prefer Mike though

That's all we need, a mod with a sense of humour.


Can I change my vote?

Hehe. Sure, shall I make it 10001 then?

[livvy145]

Hehe. Sure, shall I make it 10001 then?

Go for it.

[Dan]

lol. I'd prefer Mike though

An Irish man named Michael who prefares Mike to Mick

Hehe. Sure, shall I make it 10001 then?

Put it as high as it will allow you for the craic

[reddragon]

lol. I'd prefer Mike though



Hehe. Sure, shall I make it 10001 then?

make it 10002 mick

[paulcooper4]

make it 10002 mick

10003 fella

[Dan]

Something fishy going on here. NIGLIV has voted 10000 times

[MrMichael]

NIVLIV's vote obviously counts

Because its public I can't change the people listed in the No column to account for the new option, but 3 votes added nonetheless

[Red_Polo]

It's not about that though Ved, it's about the worrying willingness to sacrifice points and chance things. Over the course of the season, it'll cost us far more than 4 points mate. I'm making these points now, because it's still early enough to sort out. I'm concerned though that the longer it goes on, the more difficult our task is going to become. I can handle dropping points, but when we do it through our own risk-taking, it becomes difficult to accept.

We didn't sacrifice points, we played a percentages game by resting Torres - decrease your chances of winning this less important should-win game a little bit, and increase your chance of winning other more important tough to win games later. The question is not whether we should be doing this, any fool will tell you that in the Prem if you play the same team week in week out and have European fixtures too then you are going to struggle come the business end of the season.

The only argument is where you draw the line - which games you need to rest which players in. I can see that some people might think this game fell the side of the line that would see Torres starting. I don't agree, but I can see their pov. The thing is, most people here are making out it was a clear error and there is no reasonable argument for Torres not having played and that's just silly.

Against Portsmouth I thought we chose the wrong team. Too many key attacking players on the bench in a tough game, and for me, the team selection was a big factor. Against Brum at home though, it's a different question. We can argue all day about whether Torres should have started this match, but to my mind the bottom line is it's nigh on impossible to break the argument of where you draw the line on the issue into such detail that we could demonstrate he should have played. The decision is based on too many empirical factors internalised over years of watching us and Nando in particular play. We are also unaware of any data relating to the player's condition that may have influenced the decision.

So I think the first thing we need to accept then is that we can all sit here and blame Rafa for drawing the line where he does on rotation, but we don't really have anything too substantial to back it up in this case specifically. There might be a feeling that Torres should have played, but as fans we naturally want him to play every game, and we can't make any strong material argument for it.

We should also accept that there will rightly be league matches against opposition of roughly this level where Torres does not start. With that in mind, the real question that people ought to be asking is not why Torres didn't play, but why we couldn't beat Brum at home without him? Answering that might actually get us somewhere. But then it wouldn't do what people really want to do, vent their emotions before making any real analysis. Then they'll make an analysis that suits those emotions, which is why immediately after FT, sat in 2nd place in the league we had people saying we'd never win the league. All perspective out of the window, and constantly going over what is close to a non-issue.

Edit: I can't believe how long this post is. Man of few words, eh?

[Dan]

Can you edit peoples posts Mike?

I most certainly can. Though it usually says edited by at the bottom unless I'm real fast with the edit

[MrMichael]

That's a great post Polo.

Now quit being so sensible and come join my evil-mod revolution