Rafa has again publicly dissed his manager by being quite open about where he thinks he should be playing. Should he be saying this stuff in the public forum or is he entitled to speak up if he is not happy. My belief is that great player that he is, he should be respecting whatever Harry does as it is for the good of the team not any individual.
i don't think saying he was suprised to be playing right midfield was questioning Harry it was just an comment, he did'nt say he shouldn't be playing there
Interesting spin they put on it: http://www.skysports.com/story/0,19528,11095_7225053,00.html Original text is here (I think): http://www.rafaelvandervaart.com/rafael-hurts-arsenal.aspx
But to his credit he did say this: Van der Vaart has also criticised Arsenal for taking their defeat on Sunday with bad grace, following suggestions that his goal should not have stood and that he should have received a second yellow card for celebrating with the crowd. "They are bad losers. No, it was not handball - I took the ball on my chest," he said. That would probably explain the photo that is causing so much angst with some in this forum. "And have you seen how close the crowd is to our pitch? Where else should I run?
In former times comments like these from a player would have caused him all kinds of problems. In the present climate everybody talks publicly all the time. Harry says more to the nation than the Queen (which is probably about right ) He also points out that this is a comment rather than a major bone of contention despite which the Mail reporter tries his best to make it an issue. No big deal, is my feeling.
Can't see much of a problem with what he said. Has he said anything like this before? I don't get the 'again' bit of the title.
Perhaps I was a bit hasty saying he had spoken out against Harry. I come from an era where you rarely spoke out against your employer or it could have dire consequences. Rafa is a passionate person and speaks from the heart and he certainly has embraced the NL divide.
Schteffen you might recall he publicly had a go at Harry on his website for speaking out about his hamstring injury and being left out the EL squad.
Oh yeah, forgot about that. I think it's all fairly well intentioned. I'd quite like to keep him on the right though, if we had Sandro on instead of Defoe we could have more defensive cover and have Vdv and Walker on the right, linking up like Bale and Modric did when Bale was left back.
Its a fair article. I am not sure whether Redknapp is trying to avoid dropping defoe by playing VDV at RW but I suppose lennon being injured is a key factor in that decision as well.
Genuine question here. Does Van Der Vaart annoy you at times? I accept he is a wonderful footballer but do you get the impression that he thinks he is 'bigger than the club' and that he seems to think that the team should revolve around him? That's the impression you get from afar.
No I don't think that at all, he is frustrated that he is always the sacrifice and speaks out. This brings the thought again- he doesn't really have a set position like a defender or a centre forward. He is a floating attacking midfielder and as such has no set place, Harry put him out on the RW to start as he had nowhere else to put him. This maybe why Real let him go as he was that sort of player. But he just loves scoring for us and especially against the red team from up the road.
I think Real thought he could play a little deeper but he ended up competing with Kaka for a place which kept him out of the team. I have no idea what we'd have done if we had got Kaka, though.
And this is why I keep saying we need a more flexible system than 442: Sandro and Parker holding, Modric running the show in front of them, and Bale, VdV and Adebayor marauding all over the place up front. We'd be better than most teams like that.
Now we have two holding midfielders then this is an idea we can entertain so something like this: Friedel Walker King Kaboul BAE Parker Sandro Modric VDV Bale Ade
VdV played on the right because Lennon isn't fit. It won't happen often so I see no issue with his comments.
Exactly - I also think we've got pretty good cover for most of those spots for rotation - so we could stick to the system and get the players used to it Cudicini/Gomes Corluka Gallas/Dawson/Bassong Rose Huddlestone Livermore Kranjcar/Pienaar/Carroll Dos Santos Lennon/Townsend/Falque Defoe/Pav/Kane
