rotation rotation rotation

[Red Chilli]

"Evolution not revolution. I evolve but I don't.............revolve"

[Nic83]

i actually recall masher passing into touch when he was the closest lfc man to the line.

[rushscored4]

How did rotation stop Mascherano passing the ball 10 yards to a team mate?

i actually recall masher passing into touch when he was the closest lfc man to the line.

Admittedly his distribution was poor at times on Saturday but his tackling was awesome. He was still man of the match for me but then he didn't have much competition...

[CAD]

moaning about rotation just glosses over the fact that we were ****e

True. The wingers and the fullbacks aren't quite good enough. But i seriously doubt that rotation on a heavy scale promotes consistency.

When you win 6-0 you have to ride the wave. Instead we fielded an inept side with Momo and Alonso at CM (WTF!??!) against Pompey and consequently the players lost momentum instead of gaining it.

You have to have the spine in place before you **** about with 6 players in the starting XI. It will never work.

Interesting that Rafa does so well in cup competitions and so badly in the league. The difference is consistensy. You can afford to play 0-0 away and win it at home 1-0 or whatever. That is not the case in the PL. You have to be able to travel to Portsmouth and be in it for the 3 points. We rarely are with Rotation Rafa.

Rotation is a major factor. No doubt about it. It's too much, too soon!

He will never win us the PL. Not as far as I can tell

[lfcruleus]

Sorry to inject some sense but did he not only change 2 players on Saturday, and Super Torres was bloody awful against Porto? Again we hype a player beyond belief after 5 games for the club. The adulation when he came on on Saturday was ridiculous, he aint Kenny feckin Dalglish yet you know.

[Kaip]

Bump my intelligent thread

[bazza76]

Bump my intelligent thread

You getting over that bang in the head now Kaip

[The Glove]

Admittedly his distribution was poor at times on Saturday but his tackling was awesome. He was still man of the match for me but then he didn't have much competition...

And you'd be right. He could do the hard part yet the simple things went ski whiff. Still not the fault of rotation that tho.

[Morph]

I posted this in another thread but it's probably more suited to this thread, so here we are


The one thing that doesn't really sit with me when talking about this rotation business, Reina, Carra, Agger, Finnan, Arbeloa, Alonso, Gerrard, in general play nearly every game barring injury.

Now look at that back 5, how many goals have they let in in open play 0 and they've been immense. And for me the reason for this is they aren't rotated very often if at all. Reina, Carra, Finnan practically have their slots guaranteed, Agger was bedded in properly and now is practically ever present, and Arbeloa is the latest to come in, and in much the same way as Agger has looked confident and is doing a great job. For me this policy should apply all over the pitch not just in defence.

Don't get me wrong I agree with the need for rotation but it's silly to rotate so many players, so often. We maybe see one change in defence every few games, Hyypia might come in for Agger, and now we might see Arbeloa rested for Aurelio or Riise, but it won't happen too often. Now maybe this is only because of a lack of personnel in our defensive positions recently and if it is then this is worrying, because there's no way we'd have the same defensive record if we rotated our defence as often as our forwards.

The defence has a great understanding with each other, and as such they can handle the odd change because the player coming in will know the system and knows how to play.

Even in midfield more often than not we tend to Alonso, and if not for Gerrards broken toe we'd have probably seen him in almost every game, either in the middle or on the right. Now there's no problem in the odd rotation for Mascherano or Sissoko, but to chop and change between the 4 all the time is silly, and i think this costs us because each midfield pairing will play in a different and that means the type of balls our wingers and forwards get from them will change all the time, which can't be good for the players. We've seen more changes than usual I feel because of the injuries to Gerrard and Alonso, so this issue maybe isn't as serious as our forward issue.

The main problem this season apart from when we played whipping boys Derby and Toulouse has been scoring goals. And is it really any surprise, we've got 4 strikers, and if playing with 2 up front that's a possible 6 different combinations for our two forward players, and after a bit of research we've already started with 5 different striking combinations this season. Juts to get some stats that's 5 different pairings in 9 matches, now I can't see how that type of rotation can bring understanding between the strikers.

One explanation for it could be that Rafa is trying out all his different combinations, but that doesn't explain why he's left one out. Incidentally the one he's so far neglected to play is Crouch and Torres, which a lot of people have been calling for and personally I'd like to see, maybe we will in our next match.

I didn't intend this post to be so long, so I'll end it here, but the one conclusion that I can draw from this is that, in the short term with so many new players rotation is not good, just look at our forward line recently and the lack of goals vs the amount of changes. In the long term however when all the players become used to playing with each other and learn where each player likes the ball played, what their movement is like, then we could have a fantastic top 4 players, but for it to work I think Rafa needs to treat his rotation policy for his forwards in the same way he treats it for his defenders.

[Guest]

Excellent post morph but at the end of the day, we'll have to keep faith with Rafa. We can't do anything about the way he wants to function. He's done it before with Valencia so we'll have to trust him.

As Kaip said, we played poorly the past 3 games and particularly against Porto where we were abject. I don't think it's a case of rotation (the fact we played poorly) as we were winning games and playing freely before that.

Rafa sees the players & have them tested before games, so he should know better who is fit enough or not to play. We should have faith in what he's doing.

[Nic83]

Sorry to inject some sense but did he not only change 2 players on Saturday, and Super Torres was bloody awful against Porto? Again we hype a player beyond belief after 5 games for the club. The adulation when he came on on Saturday was ridiculous, he aint Kenny feckin Dalglish yet you know.

Actually some of us hype him after 5 games for LFC and 5 YEARS for Atletico.

[tomasjj]

Bump my intelligent thread

Bump...just so that your alotted 15 minutes of fame are soon over.

[Parm]

Theres some Liverpool fans who just dont appreciate what we have.

To all you doubters out there, Rafa is clearly in the top 3 managers in the world. In 3 years we've been in 2 european finals winning one, we've won the fa cup and we've come on leaps and bounds since Houllier. We're unbeaten this season and havent conceded from open play, and yes, we have played bad the past couple of games but 2 bad performances doesnt lose the league for us. I guarantee that all of you who say he wont win us the league didnt feel that way when we were beating Derby 6-0 and virtually beating Chelsea

Rafa is the best man for the job so I dont see why we should ever get rid of him if we have the choice to keep him.

so you do talk some sense!

[Lecter]

If you don't play a player week in week out then he will lose match fitness.

You need to play games to keep match fit so sorry Kaip, I don't agree with you at all.

Play the best players and they will give you a better performance because they will be match fit to do it.

Just like Gerrard & Mascherano gave us at Porto & v Birmingham on Saturday

The fact is you are only as good as your last performance and you should have to earn the right to wear that shirt

Gerrard & Mascherano have given been doing Salif Diao impressions in the last couple of games, Torres was ****e v Porto

[215liverpool]

I still think Gerrard is suffering from his injury. I know football clubs have the best doctors and physios that money can buy but the guy did fracture a bone in his foot and he only had about two weeks rest before he played for England.

Surely that can't be enough!