Lots of rotation but yet City are flying by only really rotating Aguero and Jesus. Likes of Silva, Sterling and KDB seem to be playing every game. Sterling's game is also very similar to Mane and Salah, in terms that he basis a lot of his play on the use of his pace.
Think all this rotation is starting to hamper us, we can't get into any rhythm. We get a win but then we go into the next game with 6 different players starting. I get we needed to manage the players better than last year around this time but this is getting ridiculous now. Play your strongest team, get the win early on and then look to take the key players off early.
Key words here being "seem to be playing every game". They don't actually. Sterling, Sane, Aguero and Jesus have all played less minutes in the league than Firmino and Salah for example. Coutinho and Mane less minutes due to injuries and suspensions and their rotation has more to do with both having been injured earlier on in the season / knocks rather than Klopp actually wanting to rotate them. If both had been fit, I'd guess that they would have played around the same amount of minutes as Firmino and Salah.
I'm guessing the numbers people are seeing with regards to squad changes are Premier League numbers? That would make sense. City have rotated a lot more in the CL. For example Silva has played only 75 minutes over their last three CL games while most of our front four have started / finished all of our last three CL games. For comparison, both Salah and Firmino started our last 3 CL games and played around 240 (give or take) minutes. So while Silva is playing almost every PL game, he has only played half the CL games.
Only exceptions for City are De Bruyne (who is one of the fittest players in the PL) and Fernandinho (due to a lack of suitable alternative in their squad). In defence City are very limited due to injuries (Kompany, Stones, Mendy) and he just hasn't been able to rotate there.
Of course us not being able to rotate in the CL was down to our own doing. Had we won against Sevilla, Klopp would've been able to rest our key players against Spartak and we likely wouldn't have seen as much rotation in the attacking side of things as we are seeing now.
Arsenal have no need to rotate in the league. They played a second / third string for all their Europa League games.
Spurs have indeed not rotated as much as we have and look at their form in the past month. Beaten by Arsenal and Leicester, draws against Watford and West Brom, 2 points out of 12. All of Eriksen, Alli and Kane have been / are struggling right now and it will probably get worse if Pochettino doesn't start rotating them more.
Same for the mancs, Lukaku for example has been used in every single game, he is going to pay the price for that at some point and he has been struggling too in the past 10 games. Same problem there in midfield if they want to rotate, the drop in quality from Matic and Pogba to Fellaini and Herrera is massive, far bigger than for example Can and Wijnaldum rotating with Henderson and Chamberlain.
Chelsea has also been rotating quite a bit. Less than us, but look at the key players that haven't been rotated as much: Morata and Kante. Both have suffered muscle injuries / back injuries. Those are injuries because they're playing too many games.
While I get that it's annoying to see many changes all the time, it'll hopefully pay off in the long run. No one was moaning about rotation when we were beating Maribor, Huddersfield, West-Ham, Brighton, Southampton, Spartak and Stoke by a combined total of 28 goals scored and only 2 conceded over all these games.
Even in the games we dropped points:
- Chelsea: rotated, were ahead, fluke goal
- Everton: rotated, were ahead, soft penalty
- West Brom: rotated, goal disallowed that probably should have stood
Yesterday's performance wasn't a good one by any means, but in both games we created plenty of chances to win both of them.