Rafa thread - decisions & comments etc

[disco]

thought it was a tight game, didn't really matter who finished the game.

Suspect Gerrard coming off on 70mins was pre-determined...

[AFII]

I'm happy because this clearly shows that we are not a one man team anymore.

We can cope without Gerrard without any bigger problem. Agger and Reina are for example more important than him.

A big plus to Stevie for the way he reacted to the sub. He was surprised and disappointed but that was it.

The next games will show if Rafa did the right thing or not. If it will make Stevie think that he will have to fight for his place then that is what he and the team needs.

We need every player to play better and that includes Stevie.

[dww]

To be honest I think that part of it is to do with Stevies impact on other players. He leads by a very passionate example and at times others pick up the wrong part of this and become rushed and when we are playing against 10 men that is the last thing you need to be. From that point of view Lucas came on and the team did play more poised football.

I think another factor in the decision was that Rafa feels to be uncertain of the form of all of our wide midfield players. This meant he wanted to have the width come from the fullbacks - in order to allow them to push up he wanted to have Momo and Mascher in the middle.

I know Momo didn't have a great game but I thought it was far more mixed than it was horrendous. He put some nice balls into the feet of Kuyt and Voronin which they didn't take full advantage of. On the negative side a lot of his passing was wayward and he wasn't the manic tackling machine he can be.

[El Jefecito]

thought it was a tight game, didn't really matter who finished the game.

Suspect Gerrard coming off on 70mins was pre-determined...

Hmmmmmm, maybe. I'm convinced that Rafa thinks that SG is a trouble maker.

[Guest]

thought it was a tight game, didn't really matter who finished the game.

Suspect Gerrard coming off on 70mins was pre-determined...

Said in another thread we fully deserved the win. We should have battered them if we took our chances. We didn't play as badly as people make out.

Paul Wilson at Goodison Park
Sunday October 21, 2007
The Observer

Rarely has a Merseyside derby failed to provide controversy and confrontation, and with an own goal, two penalties, two red cards and plenty more this one was full to the brim.

In coming from behind to win with a penalty in stoppage time Liverpool preserved their unbeaten league record, though even at that late stage there was still time for Everton to feel hard done by. Jamie Carragher used a wrestling move to pull Joleon Lescott to the floor in the closing seconds, only for referee Mark Clattenburg to signal no foul and wave play on. Rafa Benitez later added insult to injury - he seems to have developed a knack for winding up his local rivals - by claiming Lescott had dived.

Article continues
It was certainly no dive and Liverpool can count themselves lucky to escape with all three points. The fact they deserved all three points is neither here nor there. Playing against a 10-man Everton side for almost all of the second half Liverpool created enough clear-cut chances to win by a distance, yet managed to waste all of them. They finally penetrated Everton's increasingly desperate defensive scrambling in added time, when Phil Neville's outstretched arm illegally prevented Leiva Lucas marking his Liverpool debut with a derby-winning goal, though could not have complained had Dirk Kuyt's second success from the spot been answered by a penalty at the other end.

More red cards are shown in a Merseyside derby than any other Premier League fixture, and when Neville collected the second of his Everton career for his goal-keeping impersonation it took the total to 16. Everton have 10, Liverpool 6. Tony Hibbert had preceded his captain into the dressing room at the start of the second half for a foul on Steven Gerrard that simultaneously brought Liverpool back into the game and increased their chances of winning.

Everton had been slightly fortunate to turn round in front through Sami Hyypia's own goal, the defender's stab at a clearance from an Alan Stubbs cross flying past Jose Reina off an upright. That gave the home side confidence for the second half, so much so that David Moyes admitted a gamble in seeking a second goal from a 53rd-minute corner had backfired. Everton were caught with too many men upfield when Liverpool cleared and broke. Hibbert hesitated fatally in allowing Andriy Voronin to collect the ball in the centre circle, and was faced with a race he could not win when the Ukrainian's pass sent Gerrard galloping towards goal. Rejecting the cheaper option of fouling Gerrard outside the box, Hibbert rather sportingly waited to collide with his opponent inside the area, and was duly punished by a red card as well as Kuyt's opening goal. The referee initially brought out yellow, only changing it to red after Gerrard appeared to remind him of his obligation to dismiss an errant last defender.

Incident then piled on incident with Kuyt distinctly lucky to see only yellow for a two-footed lunge at Neville. Voronin, Momo Sissoko and John Arne Riise missed gilt-edged chances to make the game safe and Benitez eventually hauled off a surprised looking Gerrard to give the 20-year-old Brazilian Lucas a first taste of English football in the middle of an overheated derby. 'Sometimes you need to play with the brain and not the heart,' Benitez explained afterwards. 'You can have too much passion.'

Perhaps it was no accident that a Lucas shot led to the winning penalty, though if Voronin in particular had finished with his usual sharpness the passion might have drained from Everton much earlier. 'Making chances and not taking them has been the story of our season so far, but we are still getting the results,' Benitez said. Moyes was predictably less impressed by the refereeing standards on display. 'I thought it was clear penalty at the end and the referee had a very good view of the Kuyt challenge on Neville,' he said 'I don't know how if he sees that he can only give a yellow. What we've all been told this season is that anything two-footed and off the ground is an automatic red.'

The Everton manager's disappointment was understandable, though when all the dust has settled Moyes will have to consider how Everton came to lose a game they won by three goals last season. It cannot simply be down to Andy Johnson's injury. Yakubu and Victor Anichebe, Everton's new-look strike partnership, look mobile and muscular but actually delivered very little. Everton's problem, compounded by Hibbert's dismissal, was the same as England's in Russia, a defence pushed too far back without an effective link to bring the strikers into play. And Everton's proud record of not conceding a goal to Liverpool last season could easily have been buried under an avalanche here. With more composed finishing Liverpool might have won by three or four.

Sad to think that these derby occasions are under threat from Everton's proposed move to Kirkby. They will not be the same when the two clubs no longer live side by side, even if the rivalry continues. Exactly as a light aircraft circled Goodison trailing the slogan 'KEEP EVERTON IN OUR CITY', the Liverpool fans in the ground were hoisting a banner which read 'JUST GO'. They will miss each other if they are forced to part.

[carheex]

Hmmmmmm, maybe. I'm convinced that Rafa thinks that SG is a trouble maker.

My interpretation is this: Rafa had settled for a point and wanted Gerrard fresh for the CL game. People are reading way too much into his substitution.

[Shanks]

Said in another thread we fully deserved the win. We should have battered them if we took our chances. We didn't play as badly as people make out.

Are we swapping avatars or what??

[Guest]

Are we swapping avatars or what??

Who's that chick ?

[El Jefecito]

My interpretation is this: Rafa had settled for a point and wanted Gerrard fresh for the CL game. People are reading way too much into his substitution.

I understand why you can see that The next couple of games will probably prove that one or the other of us is talking BS.

[Shanks]

Hmmmmmm, maybe. I'm convinced that Rafa thinks that SG is a trouble maker.

[dww]

Said in another thread we fully deserved the win. We should have battered them if we took our chances. We didn't play as badly as people make out.

We created about 4 decent chances other than those which lead to the penalties and only two were real 'should score' type openings. We finished poorly and let them dominate about 30 minutes of the game these are faults of our team. We maybe didn't play as badly as some make out but we did play poorly.

We created little for long periods and failed to deal with a persistent tactic to target Finnan with long balls and Lescott pushing on from fullback, despite having 2 defensive midfielders in the middle. I think any other analysis is polishing a turd to be honest.

On the plus side derby games are often like that and we got the three points and they came at a great point in the season for us. It was also an early kick off after internationals which we know can cause us problems.

[carheex]

I understand why you can see that The next couple of games will probably prove that one or the other of us is talking BS.

My guess is both of us!

[El Jefecito]

Penny for your thoughts.

[anfieldanfield]

It was a pretty weird decision.

But hopefully it will give Stevie the kick up the arse he needs.

[paulcooper4]

Rafa has king sized bollocks and is afraid of nothing. Was a wild decision which baffled the **** out of me when he done it, but at the end of the day, it worked.

Rafa is a hardcase lar, he knew full well the stick he would have got if we hadnt won but he done it anyway.

Full respect to Rafa for doing a very brave (foolish, psychotic even?) thing.

Rafa is the boss at that club and I think stevey just got that message.

Rafa the mentalist