Exactly. Plus if he was playing then, duh, someone wouldn't be. So can those in favour of rotation specify who wouldn't have been playing (rotated) earlier in the season? What would have happened then if we had lost one of those games where we had rotated? Can you imagine all the posts on here about why Redknapp didn't play his strongest team! So people should understand exactly what they're advocating. They're saying that at the stage of the season when we were flying, we should have broken up a successful formation and cohesion in order to play other players... and assuming that it would not have affected our performance in that particular game or subsequent games when we had disrupted our own run. So I basically don't go with the rotation argument, particularly in hindsight (how many posters were clamouring for it at the time?) There may be some merit in criticising Harry's tactical changes, but remember we are making an assumption about what has actually happened, and then made a conclusion based on that. We have no concrete information about how the system changed and why, and if it was actually decided by Harry or forced on him. No it doesn't look good but we just don't know. Even more than that you can't say that we've deserved to lose or draw all the games we have done. Even with these 'Harry plays master tactician' complaints, in many of those games we still should have won and were unlucky not to do so. Those games have now been overshadowed by the admittedly awful performances that have come toward the end of the season, but it is a dangerous game to make all your plans on the few games that have gone wrong? We should not make plans based on scorelines, but on how we actually played. In many of our 'bad' scorelines we were not 'bad'. I am not happy about the current situation, but I think we should be careful not to overreact and consequently wreck permanently some of the things that were in place earlier in the season that contributed to our great run. We might not be able to reproduce them if we change too much now!
I've never looked at it like this, but you could be right here, Bajan. it would certainly make sense when it comes to the random switching of players to obscure areas of the pitch that they aren't used to. bale on the right? Lennon on the left? sandro on the right? luka on the left? The reality however, it that it's totally backfired, put us completely out of shape, and make him look even worse as a "tactician".
If you look at the squads Utd, City and Chelsea have then it really isn't clear who the best 11 players are and the managers rotate based on opposition to some extent. So for Utd SAF might pick Nani and Young as wide men if he is on the attack, and Valencia and Park if he is defending. He's got similar opions in midfield, using Anderson, Carrick, Fletcher, Scholes and Giggs depending on tactics. Our squad isn't as deep so rotation works less well, especially if we play 442 where our best 11 has hardly any proper cover. If we went 4231 then with no injuries we could use different combinations of Parker, Livermore, Huddlestone and Sandro as the midfield two, and different combinations of Modric, Kranjcar, VdV, Bale and Lennon as the attacking three. That has the side effect that if someone gets injured, you've got someone else to bring in who is used to playing in the system and not rusty. If you always play the 'best 11' you will do very well when they are all fit and very badly when some are missing. Ring any bells?
If anything, 4-2-3-1 is better suited to our players than 4-4-2 at times. We could play a combination of Parker/Sandro/Livermore alongside Modric/Huddlestone (and possibly Kranjcar) with Lennon/Dos Santos/Townsend, Van Der Vaart, Bale/Pienaar/Rose - but this soon underlines that we don't have direct competition for certain players in that system (i.e. Van Der Vaart), whilst in other cases the rotation would be like-for-like (as in the case of Lennon and Dos Santos/Townsend or Bale/Rose) We could play Kranjcar on the right or behind the striker, but that's the point - we "could" play him, rather than he "can" play there.
We weren't playing one game a week though, Notso and Ferguson constantly rotates his side. He seems to know what he's doing. Modric has played 90 minutes in 22 consecutive Premier League games. He looks ****ing knackered. Both of our full-backs have played constantly. They look knackered. Scott Parker's played constantly. He looks knackered. Redknapp's clearly not managed the fitness levels of the squad well, whatever you feel about rotation. We have/had the players to keep everyone fresh, happy and focused, but we didn't use them. Our first XI are now tired, drained and morale is in the toilet. Our back up players have no confidence, no sharpness and are looking for the door. I'm not sure why people seem to think that I'm advocating a change of formation or system, as we had the players to use both, even without all of our first XI, bar maybe Adebayor. We have/had suitable replacements for virtually everyone else. The fact that we did choose to change everything recently, for no apparent reason, is one of the things that's lead to our demise, in my opinion. I don't think that this can be leveled at me, to be honest. I've been going on about rotation since well into last season, which I'm sure some of those that disagree with me can attest to.
Luke - I'm sure the third word should be 'not' in your post, the rest of it reads that way...typo? PNP - I can't believe you wrote this..."We weren't playing one game a week though, Notso and Ferguson constantly rotates his side. He seems to know what he's doing." For the first half of the season we had a PL 11, and everyone else was EL/Carling and you know it, midweek league games are not every week and you know that aswell, I'm not sure if you saw my other post (as usual last on page!), but don't cast the aspertion I disagree with resting/rotating, I'm all for it when its warranted. Look at the dates on our early season PL fixtures, once a week, **** me there was weeks we didn't play for other reasons, sometimes it was 10 days between PL games, so to suggest giving someone a start so they're 'not rusty' when the 'first11' are hardly playing is about as stupid as it gets. Using United isn't the best example to prove your point either, apart from Lukes post, the majority of their squad is in the early/mid 40's appearance wise, ours mid 30's, the exceptions I agreed with you the other day. At the end of the day Uniteds squad wasn't good enough to maintain a PL/CL push. Our squad with a couple of exceptions, are generally not good enough for their intended replacement, end of, and would not have changed results at either end of season. Imho I think far too much has been expected, instead of celebrating our best run ever in the PL, its expected to be the norm. The amount of defeats seems on par for the last few years, bizarrely they've come all at once, but so did all the wins that nobodys interested in anymore. Rooney has played the same amount of games as our key players and does not look knackered, on this I now totally agree with you that our conditioning looks ****, and I have no idea why, there is no reason for them to look like they do, they've done no more than any other player for the other teams. One thing I can tell you about those figures is, rotation with poorer players, is not the answer, whatever part of the season you choose to do it.
because it is nothing to do with fitness..it is in the head and our players have lost theirs......when you have momentum and an achievable goal then it fills you with optmism...when you are a shambles then life becomes difficult and fatigued and these processes occur doubly quick when you have always been renowned for being a soft touch..like our team....as in Spurs.
The fact is that what got us into the CL was a certain amount of squad rotation - Kranjcar came into the team and scored some crucial goals, Pavlyuchenko came into the team and had a run of scoring goals - but since then Harry has got it into his head to play the Best XI for 38 league games, plus assorted games in various cups, which has burned out the first team and pissed off the reserves who aren't getting opportunities.
Heads might be burned out but bodies no. Smart has made the case, there is no reason our players should be anymore tired than any other PL side. UNLESS they feed on burgers and pizzas and no one pays any attention to their diet. They have enough technical staff to sort these things surely! Heads are wrong, can't really be anything else. They just need to get out there and batter Blackburn and start to feel good about themselves again. Low fat batter of course.
Krancjar is one of the exceptions, but imo has had niggly injuries himself when needed, one those seasons. You can include Sandro, Daws and Hudd in a list of exceptions, but we haven't been able to have the benefit of their quality due to injury. After that the quality of player is emergency only. 38 games is no more than other players who look fresher. Its not the 1st 11's fault the quality of a 2nd 11 isn't good enough to maintain a challenge in the weaker rounds of the cup comps. Not good enough for that, but you stil want to play them in a PL game. Every game is hard and you can't afford to weaken yourself in any way, or you get punished. You've not been able to reason off anything I've said, I've answered your post with my previous one. If we're going round in circles thats impasse and move on.
Another day, another ****bucket showing no qualms about us becoming collateral damage to The Greater Good that is the England job.
fukin tossers...if this isnt tapping up by ex players...who the FA have allowed to do their dirty work,then i dont know what is! however you could argue that Harry taps himself up for everyday he doesnt distance himslf from the job...much to our detriment!
Harrys demeanour in interview is different, ok the questions put him on the defensive straight away, but there's no more smiles, he looks uneasy all the time, shifting about, doesn't inspire me, so god knows what the players think, they must see them too.
Shilton talk's about underachiving in tournaments,Harry's going to do no better,we have'nt got the players
I think Redknapp would do a good job as England manager, as he won't have to deal with many of the aspects of the game that he struggles with. Set-piece training, squad rotation, keeping fringe players happy and day to day fitness all go out the window, as does maintaining the age of the squad. Most of them are dealt with at club level and the rest are largely irrelevant. He'll motivate the players that he picks and he'll probably pick appropriate tactics for those players. That's the best that England can hope for at the moment, in my opinion. Will he win anything? Probably not, but who would?
Redknapp's now 6/4 to be the next Premier League manager to leave his post. Not a bad bet, but I wouldn't trust any of the current chairmen down the bottom not to get a bit trigger happy and ditch someone now in a desperate attempt to stay up. McLeish is 7/2, Dalglish is 8/1 (won't happen) and Kean's an enormous 20/1, somehow.
Redknapp would be in the same mould as Joe Mercer and Ron Greenwood both of whom allowed players to express themselves without too much in the way of 'tactics'. At least England produced some enjoyable performances under them and we couldn't be much worse than we already are. On the other hand the two best tacticians IMO were Ramsey & Venables who weren't without success. Robson became more successful when he gave the players more room to express themselves. So Redknapp would probably be as good as anybody and we might be a bit more entertained when watching the games.
One - probably false, all things considered - story is that the FA will offer him the job next week and he'll take it. That should add a couple of million to our compensation...
goal say's that harry will accept the England job next week when it's offered to him,and Spurs are lining up brenden Rodgers as his replacement
