Rafa - I'm here to stay

[Guest]

Mourinho was... he got his team to the semis two years in 3... coupled with league title wins. Wenger got his to a final 18 months ago. It depends where your bread is buttered.. if you want the league you go for a manager who can get you it, if you want the CL you go for Rafa although I am sure the Anfield crowd has a lot do with it too... Rafa's record in the CL with Valencia wasn't anything to write home about.

Mourihno got a bucket load of cash. He bought every world class player on sight in his first full season. You can't really compare.

[Johnny]

Mourinho was... he got his team to the semis two years in 3... coupled with league title wins. Wenger got his to a final 18 months ago. It depends where your bread is buttered.. if you want the league you go for a manager who can get you it, if you want the CL you go for Rafa although I am sure the Anfield crowd has a lot do with it too... Rafa's record in the CL with Valencia wasn't anything to write home about.

If you want to win the PL you get a manager who has the Financial backing just like Fergie and Jose.Money made them sucessfull,not tactical nous.

[nbryan1764]

Mourinho was... he got his team to the semis two years in 3... coupled with league title wins. Wenger got his to a final 18 months ago. It depends where your bread is buttered.. if you want the league you go for a manager who can get you it, if you want the CL you go for Rafa although I am sure the Anfield crowd has a lot do with it too... Rafa's record in the CL with Valencia wasn't anything to write home about.

thats because he was only in the competition with them once and they got to the QF...hardly a crap record either. His European record with them was:

2001/02 UEFA Cup QF
2002/03 Champions League QF
2003/04 UEFA Cup Winners

So if his European record wasn't anything to write home about, it was certainly worth an email or a postcard!!

[AFII]

Benfica and Milan is so far the only teams in the last five years that have knocked Rafa out in Europe.

I would say that is an excellent record, he is simply the best one around if you want success in Europe.

[Craig_H]

Rafa 'rotates', Fergie 'rests' or 'freshens up'. the media are obsessed with LFC and'rotation'. I cant wait for the day Rafa can start with 60 million pounds worth of strikers on the bench. We've got 4 games in 10 days, what would you do?

No, fergie does it differently. He rotates more intelligently - for example, fulham away on saturday, he rotated - fulham are ****e and craven cottage isnt a tricky place to win. Portsmouth away IS a tricky place to win - so you dont drop your two best players for games like that. Why did rafa do it? CL game 4 days later, perchance?

And changing 2 or 3 players per game is fine. Rafa will change 5 or 6. That disrupts things.

For 4 games in 10 days, it's essential. You do it intelligently and you can be ok. What you dont do is rest them for Pompey away and then pick them for Reading in the carling cup. You just dont.

[Craig_H]

The scum made at least 4 changes on saturday, including their 2 cm's (a key area of the pitch), and Rooney and Ronaldo - arguably their best two players this season. So that is like Rafa "rotating" Gerrard and Torres - but I don't see Fergie getting stick for it.....

That was Fulham away, you can do it for those games (when you have a finely balanced, crucial CL game 4 days later). It's the 2nd leg of the knockout phase, not one of six group games, so yeah, you'd rotate for that.

[AFII]

The difference is that Rafa rotate systems, Fergie don't.

It now look like Rafa has settled on a 4-2-3-1 system and we are now playing better.

[Red_hot]

I'm sooooooooo sick of hearing about Jose. Jose this Jose that. He's not our manager and hopefully never will be so shut up about him ffs!!!!!!!

[Craig_H]

That's not why we've been poor. He normally settles for the same side and formation in the run up. Yes, he tinkles a lot at the start of the season simply because each player's fitness is probably not the same, therefore he's trying to use his resources the best he can.

At least give him credit for trying things instead of arguing for the sake of arguing about the so called fact he's got no clue in what he's doing. As if you know more than him. That's pretty stupid if you ask me Syd.

So he does it in the first half of the season and we're 20 points off the pace. Points lost at the start of the season count just as much.

Give him credit for losing games, because he was 'trying things' ? Christ. You dont 'try' things that lose you league games, if you can help it. And he's tried it now, he spent years trying it, it didnt work. So why does he keep 'trying' it?

Even he himself admitted that he 'gambles' a bit much with team selections - but in the same article, he doesnt indicate any willingness to stop doing it. What hope is there with that refusal to stop making those mistakes??

[Craig_H]

Fergie is winning, that's the difference. If Rafa had a record of let's say 9 consecutive wins earlier this season, we wouldn't be discussing about that.

And the regularity and wins on the trot was the hallmark of our team the last 2 seasons. It's gone a bit pear shaped this season, but it hasn't got anything to do with rotation. We lost the league last season and the season before because of slow starts. This time around we've started well (which proves that Rafa has learned something) but we've been poor since the start of the year. That has been our demise.

Or maybe it's because we had an easier opening 9 games...

[Craig_H]

There isn't a single manager in the PL that is great both in europe and in the PL, not even Fergie or Wenger.

So you admit rafa isnt great in the PL - and yet you want us to keep him...

The CL is easier to win than the PL...and a manager who can win the PL is more likely to suss the CL IMO, than vice versa - how much longer do you think the likes of Man Utd, Arsenal and Chelsea will fail to win the CL? It wont take much longer. Then what?

[Craig_H]

No it works. It takes time to implement something that players aren't really used to.

The past 2 seasons we've been very good in 2/3 of the league, but paid the price for poor starts. We've started well this year only to have a blip at the turn of the year.

Why arent they 'used to it' after 3 years?

You dismiss 'poor starts' as if they're out of our hands, as if to say 'oh well, it was a poor start, nothing we could have done about it'...and the same goes for the blip at the turn of the year, as you describe it. How about Rafa does things in a way that MINIMIZE the chances of such blips? It IS in his control, you know.

[Craig_H]

Benfica and Milan is so far the only teams in the last five years that have knocked Rafa out in Europe.

I would say that is an excellent record, he is simply the best one around if you want success in Europe.

That's not in question. Some of us would like to think we're a contender in the PL too. Sadly, under rafa, we never have been and there's little to suggest we will be.

[Guest]

So he does it in the first half of the season and we're 20 points off the pace. Points lost at the start of the season count just as much.

Give him credit for losing games, because he was 'trying things' ? Christ. You dont 'try' things that lose you league games, if you can help it. And he's tried it now, he spent years trying it, it didnt work. So why does he keep 'trying' it?

Even he himself admitted that he 'gambles' a bit much with team selections - but in the same article, he doesnt indicate any willingness to stop doing it. What hope is there with that refusal to stop making those mistakes??

Rotation isn't the problem, it's the quality of the squad. Had we had another player the caliber of Torres plus two equally good wingers, chopping and changing without repercussions on the results wouldn't have been a problem.

Fergie rotating against a ****e team as Fulham holds some degree of truth, but we ain't got a squad as good as Man. Utd. It's simple. We need 3 world class players in the attacking areas to at least be their equals.

[Scratch]

Can't believe i just read all 11 pages of this thread...can't believe i'm gonna bother posting my view on it either, cos it'll get lost in the mindless to-ing and fro-ing between certain posters intent on belittling each others opinions. Still...

I have nothing against the idea of Rafa rotating players (I'd like for him to have better options available sometimes, but he's building a squad as fast as money, and available players, will allow). My main gripe was his constant formation changes, which must have been more confusing for the players that the rotation policy. However, he now appears to have found a settled formation (4-2-3-1) and he is still rotating his players within this formation, albeit not as much as before (ie Lucas/Alonso, Finnan/Carragher, Carragher/Skertle and probably Hyppia/Agger, Babel/Benny and Aurelio/Arbeloa as well as fitness levels dictate). This settled formation is to me the best way of doing things, as it allows the players to learn their roles much quicker, and thus team fluidity grows and we see less disjointed displays.

Well, that's my view on it anyway. Stick to the formation, and the rest will come easier.