Quote:
Originally Posted by united
Well that person is clearly a smart individual!
Difference of opinion comes with sports and everyone is wrong now and then so me sharing a different opinion than people you know isn't necessarily a bad thing. I think he's a great tactician but awful when it comes to man management and purchasing players.
In my opinion Liverpool's problem in recent years has been depth and use of players, not as much tactics. Now I rarely watch or read about their play on the field but always analyze their buys, so your opinion on their play would be a much more educated one than mine.
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Rafa was a little baffling with his tactics, he liked weird things like zonal marking off of corners and free kicks rather than man on man, and not putting players on the posts on corners.
The thing that I found about Rafa is that he had a system and you played it and that was that.
But, in my own experience as a soccer coach as well as my lifetime of passionately following the game, the few inevitable truths that I have found stem from this sort of inflexibility.
There is no mystical, magical system that will ensure that you always win. There are ways for improving your odds of not losing, but there is no great system for winning, despite what the English will tell you due to their baffling hardon for the 4-4-2.
You design the system to exploit the weaknesses of the opponent and shield your own weaknesses.
And the other thing is, having a system is all well and great, but you have to have the players that can play it. When you work at the top flight, you can say this is the system and this is how we play it, we'll bring in players that can play that way and ship out ones who cant because hes the manager and what he says goes.
But if you hold on to players who cant adapt to the style, or wont, then the whole thing becomes this useless anvil that you're dragging around hindering you from winning.
That being said, I thought Rafa was good in many ways, but at the same time, I feel his time has passed. He had his run at Anfield, and it was a good one and one that I feel means that he's earned a special place in the hearts of supporters, but that doesnt discount the fact that his time had come.
Dont want to stay too long so the supporters can watch you become fallible.