Is rotation the issue?

[Shanks]

Whereas Rafa Rotates the entire squad, centre backs, midfielders and forwards.

Agger injured, Alonso injured, Pennant suspended. Kuyt off form

Against Marseille at Home, that starting 11 (Leto aside maybe) should have been able to get us a result tonight.


Reina, Carragher, Hyppia, Finnan, Gerrard, Torres, Crouch no-one can argue with those starting tonight.
His only mistake for me was maybe not starting with Riise aswell.


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[onceared]

Agger injured, Alonso injured, Pennant suspended. Kuyt off form

Against Marseille at Home, that starting 11 (Leto aside maybe) should have been able to get us a result tonight.


Reina, Carragher, Hyppia, Finnan, Gerrard, Torres, Crouch no-one can argue with those starting tonight.
His only mistake for me was maybe not starting with Riise aswell.


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indeed, but i did say in my original post, i am not talking about tonights game.
And your point regarding injured players would stand up only if it wasnt for the fact he rotated both Agger and Xabi out of the side before they were injured, so had they been fit there is no expectation or guarantee that they would have played at all.

[Red_Polo]

There really are

I take your point and it's obviously not the root of all the problems at the moment but it's a problem all the same. When the team is performing as poorly as it has been I would have thought that the best thing for Rafa to do would be to play his best eleven, or as close to it as possible, for a run of matches to try and get a bit of consistency going. That's what the likes of Ferguson and Wenger do. Yes, every manager rotates but 5 changes one week, 6 the next etc... is over doing it imho. It's rotationfor rotations sake.

Take tonight for instance. Why did Babel not play on the left? Why did Leto, who's had very little time in the first team, play ahead of a player who cost the club £11m and hasn't played for the last two matches? It's baffling to say the least and it did nobody any good, especially Leto who will probably not play in the first team for a very long time and probably be ****ting himself next time he plays. It was a poor decision by Rafa and it was, imho, rotation for rotations sake.

Some very reasonable points there, but the thing is, we have rotated like this and still performed to a very high level. When we had played a string of excellent games including totally outplaying Chelsea, when all and sundry thought we were all set for number 19, we had been rotating. It's been a constant factor during periods of success and failure. So I think we're overlooking an awful lot to pin poor form so heavily on rotation.

Man U don't rotate key players, or at least they didn't do it before this season.

The same back four played week in week out if fit.

Carrick, Giggs, Ronaldo and Rooney played week in week out if fit.

That is nine players if you include the keeper. Fergie may have rested them before a CL game but that's about it. He didn't do it all the time, week in week out.

That would mean 2 changes per game max, and the stats say otherwise. Ferguson made the same number of changes as Rafa last season. If you're going to say Rafa rotates key players more, well, looking at the number of games that our best players play each season compared to theirs, and taking into account the fact this means we get more out of our best players when they do play as well as the logical deduction we can make that Ferguson rotates his other players more than Rafa does, I would say the way the difference in policy affects how the team as a whole plays is pretty insignificant. Certainly it is not the cause of our slump now. For one thing, when some of our best players are playing, they're playing poorly.

On the flipside. Rotation is not a problem if the players being rotated in are good enough...sadly that doesn't see to be the case for us at the moment.

When it comes to our forwards (and I include wingers in that), I totally agree

Babel has the potential to be a top quality foward, but he's not quite doing it for us at the moment. Voronin, Crouch and Kuyt have some great attributes and are all good players in their own right, but we just don't have the right blend. We've got too many prosaic strikers who do their best work outside the box, there's too much perspiration not enough inspiration, their games are based too much looking for a teammate and not enough individual skill and killer instinct.

It's fine when you've got one striker like that, they can be brilliantly effective too with the right players around them. It's just we don't quite have the right balance. Don't get me wrong, I think we have enough to challenge, but our forward line is not ideal. Not just the strikers, we're still lacking that crucial winger who can get behind defences game after game. We have few good wide players like but nobody really top drawer.

[sid]

The whole fecking football world can see it's a bloody issue except for Benitez and some very stubborn blind Liverpool fans. I can't be arsed going into the negitives of it anymore - i'm tired of it, but when we have nothing to play for come March lets hear ya again. He is rotating us outta of the Premiership before it even begins.... **** the cups, i couldn't give a toss about them.

[sid]

Man Utd and Chelsea rotate like **** and do well. Win league titles even. It's got next to nothing to do with friggin rotation.


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Man Utd and Chelsea do NOT rotate like we do - it's nothing as drastic as ours. He rotates 5/6 players week FFS., How do you adhere to any kind of momentum like that?????

[Craig_H]

If they're not used to it yet....maybe that's because it isn't the best way to get the best out of your best players consistently.