Many teams in Liverpool’s situation would welcome the January transfer window as a means to address squad issues, but if this was to happen, it will have to be done the hard way.
Rafa has declared on several occasions that he had agreed with Christian Purslow to work together in dividing the priorities between the need to build a winning squad and also to look at decreasing the Club’s financial liabilities. It may be possible that for someone like Rafa, who had been complaining of not having enough funds to build the squad he needed, signing a Stg 4.5 million a year contract may have induced him to compromise and accept this way forward.
The elimination from the Champions League after the group stages further complicated matters as a possible downfall of fresh cash became suddenly unavailable. There is no doubt that in August these funds had been taken into consideration for possible changes in January, given that passing the group stages at the time seemed a formality.
To buy, Rafa has to sell. But who will we sell? To sell a player and fetch a decent price for him you have to put him on show, meaning first team playing time. A clear example is Dossena. The Italian almost left the Reds in the summer, but the deal fell through when Napoli president De Laurentis moved away from the deal. In the process, Dossena has also lost his place in the national squad because of limited playing time. The point I am making is what is his value now? Who will want to but him off us? We do not need to loan out players, we need to sell.
Rumours are circulating that some senior players may be venting off some frustration at Rafa’s conservative tactics. These rumours have not been substantiated but truth be told, we are not fielding an offensive squad. You will notice that the defensive line rarely exceeds half way up our side of the pitch and when we field Mascherano, Lucas, Gerrard, Kuyt and Benayoun we are actually playing with five midfielders (two holding, three attacking) but only one real striker. We are not making most of the width of the pitch upfront and our fullbacks are more concerned at covering their counterparts than foraying forward to get the ball inside the danger area.
We all know we need to change something. To buy we have to sell, to sell you need Clubs that want the players you intend to offload. Players will not come to Liverpool to warm the bench. Johnson chose Liverpool because he was guaranteed a starting spot, and Aquilani came because he was promised to replace Alonso. Kyrgiacos came for the honour of wearing the Liverpool shirt. The players that come want to play! Ruud van Nistelroy, just to make an example, will prefer to sit in the warm benches of the Bernabeu than the frigid ones at Anfield!
My view remains that when Alonso left the team, it was time to revise the whole gameplan. Mascherano was to be retained as the main holding midfielder, and Stevie needed to sacrifice himself and come down to direct play. Alonso needed to be replaced with a quality Stg 20 million striker to partner Torres game in, game out in a conventional 4-4-2 formation.
I don’t believe Rafa intended to replace Alonso with Lucas, not even with Aquilani. But we have been trying to play the same game and it has just not worked. Something needs to be done, and fast!
I though the same thing about Gerrard as soon as the ALonso sale went through and no direct & immediate replacement was bought for him.
That was obvious, and in some matches this season that has occured, I remember wathcing and analysing that we were creating more with Stevie deeper, but it as far as Im aware only happened towards the end of matches when we needed to create – perhaps vs. Blackburn ? [my memory is terrible, all i know is it happened]
This is only logic, the real question is why Rafa does not see this logic.
Yossi has more than enough creativity to play in the hole behind Nando & a Mascherano&Gerrad partnership in the CMF with Dirk & Albert out wide seems like the obvious MF line-up with Ngog [who was a great purchase] given the chance to play with Nando and make our offensive line more problematic for the opposition.
Another little bit of common sense and logic, Lucas is not yet good enough to deserve the starting place in the CMF when everyone is fit, yet Rafa insits he starts every game.
Why > ?
Is it because Gerrard refuses to revert to a CMF [where I always thought he influenced the game to a greater extent] or is it because Rafa does not see that as a solution to an obvious problems on the pitch because he beieves we are as good in the CMF without Gerrard, we are not.
Either way, the solution is to push Gerrad into the CMF with Mascherano, either in a 4-2-3-1 as holding MF’s – or as the heart of the team in a 4-4-2.
In my eyes, a Gerrard and Mascherano CMF partnership is truly world class. The only other problems to then solve are increasing the numbers of quality balls delivered from out wide and using the full width of the pitch as quite rightly mentioned in the origional post.
As much as we love him, Rafa makes bizaree decisions and as much as the players need to play better, Benitez is the conductor of this orchestra, those are the facts and the
As supporters who wish to openly analyse without negative repercussions, we are going to have to admit sooner or later than a large part of the mess we are in is because of Rafa.
Now I don’t care about accountability or summising negativity when it exists, all I really want is for Rafa to see these things and create the solution.
The ultimate question is will it happen ?
I hope so.