Is it Rafa or the players??

The only 'aplogy' your getting is from your mother who let you slip through her 7 fingers for dropping your inbred head on the floor while you were young.

Im sure he's had an "OPLOGY" letter from durex as a birth certificate!

Skrtel, Aurelio, Insua, Mascha and Kuyt I'd get rid of.

get rid of masch, what's wrong with u?

he's the captain of the argentinian national team and he's got the meanest tackle in the premiership

you might aswell say lets get rid of carra or benayoun

you're a joke

seriously

Anyway...

I predicted the club will finish 7th or 8th, when they do. I expect an aplogy from most of you.

what kind of pessimistic, unloyal tw*t predicts that their club will take a 6 point dive?

we had no reason to concede to that kind of attitude, I didn't, I still haven't and I would never have, even if we'd lost gerrard or MASCH

Hows about I just pin you down and fart in your mouth, it will be much more entertaining.

He's on a wind up Daz his posts get more outrageous everytime the best thing for everyones safety is blank him, not the best idea on a forum but there are exceptions to every rule.

He's on a wind up Daz his posts get more outrageous everytime the best thing for everyones safety is blank him, not the best idea on a forum but there are exceptions to every rule.

He's been banned anyway mate

  now that sack guzzler has gone....

I think it's a mixture of both with injuries sprinkled on top.

We're all bemused as to why Rafa sticks with Zonal marking when the players can't adopt it and the players themselves have let their heads drop.

There's no doubt we have the squad and the manager to win things it's just the downside is when things don't click it goes tits up in a spectacular fashion.

Must be the players, because he changed it up and we get a result!

i've revised my opinion on this and i still think the formation is a problem but i think the main one is the defence

i thought that this was a problem before but not as much as i do now

i thought it was just a matter of defensive slip-ups or a weak LB but now i see that the passing of the ball from the defensive lines is abysmal

the ball's being given away

too many balls being kicked out as a pose to prescise distribution

clearing the ball should be a last resort, the result of immense pressure

maybe this (this particular defensive problem, not all our problems full stop) could be resolved through a simple mention of it to the lads

maybe all our problems are ones that are relatively simple to solve, other than of course, the financial troubles and the struglle to find a ready first team

Well said Brian. The team is not the same as last year and we have to question the commitment of some of our players, Mascherano for one for making his feelings clear that he wanted away. What also upsets me is our lack of creativity in the middle, possesion lost, getting caught in possesion and the passing not up to scratch....If James Beatie is the answer, what is the question...

Is it Rafa or the players?

I don't think there is a simple answer to that as has been highlighted by the varied posts in this thread.

But I would have to say that, if I were forced to boil it down to one or the other, I would say Rafa is mostly culpable.

Again there are numerous factors involved with him, mostly positive ones, but I think he fails in two main areas;

1. He treats players like machines, forcing them to fit into his system rather than, a la Shankly, creating a system around the actual skills of the players. While this method of Rafa's works OK for the most part I think it does have the tendency to come unraveled under certain circumstances and it is difficult for the players' to respond during a game that is going against them because they are being forced to some degree to play against their instincts.

2. Rafa also seems to constantly browbeat the players about their mistakes. Of course this is in the mode of seeking improvement which is laudable. When the team is winning and confidence is high this constructive criticism can be tolerated well by the players and it can help them grow, although I suspect that it has destroyed the confidence of some players though, to be honest. But I think it becomes a real problem when things are going wrong as they are now. Who needs to keep hearing about the 2 mistakes you made in a game when you did 98 things right? To be honest it would piss me right off and I would start to resent Rafa over time. Maybe, just maybe, this is why we see all-too-frequent examples of a team that looks scared and, 10 times worse, looks like it doesn't even give a damn.

Yes, in my view Rafa is a top guy but I think this current malaise is more down to him than any other factors.

Is it Rafa or the players?

I don't think there is a simple answer to that as has been highlighted by the varied posts in this thread.

But I would have to say that, if I were forced to boil it down to one or the other, I would say Rafa is mostly culpable.

Again there are numerous factors involved with him, mostly positive ones, but I think he fails in two main areas;

1. He treats players like machines, forcing them to fit into his system rather than, a la Shankly, creating a system around the actual skills of the players. While this method of Rafa's works OK for the most part I think it does have the tendency to come unraveled under certain circumstances and it is difficult for the players' to respond during a game that is going against them because they are being forced to some degree to play against their instincts.

2. Rafa also seems to constantly browbeat the players about their mistakes. Of course this is in the mode of seeking improvement which is laudable. When the team is winning and confidence is high this constructive criticism can be tolerated well by the players and it can help them grow, although I suspect that it has destroyed the confidence of some players though, to be honest. But I think it becomes a real problem when things are going wrong as they are now. Who needs to keep hearing about the 2 mistakes you made in a game when you did 98 things right? To be honest it would piss me right off and I would start to resent Rafa over time. Maybe, just maybe, this is why we see all-too-frequent examples of a team that looks scared and, 10 times worse, looks like it doesn't even give a damn.

Yes, in my view Rafa is a top guy but I think this current malaise is more down to him than any other factors.

i completely and totally agree

i think that if we continue to lose, rafa's tactics in the dressing room will outweigh his tactics on the pitch. some people think this doesn't matter, but remember these players are real men playing a game and mapping out their lives. they want to make the most of it. i mean, look at what happened at Barcelona two years ago. They lost a lot of good players because of locker room issues, but luckily those players were on their way out anyway, and their youth system is the best in the world. i don't think at this moment we could reload as quickly as barcelona if there was serious unrest in the dressing room. i feel like rafa's a difficult man to understand for almost every person on earth, perhaps his wife knows something about him. i mean, fernando torres scores in a game, and he scolds him about hitting the post! what is he writing in that notebook? and what do those hand signals mean... i dunno, when you're getting results it all seems brilliant, but when you're not, it just seems ridiculous. the hand waving - what is that?

i like rafa, but at what point does enough become enough? do we drop out of the europa league early? do we drop out of the champions league next year? do we drop lower than 7th? at one point do we just say that 'we appreciate what you've done for us, but in the end the club is not where it needs to be.' How much time and how much money do we lose before that happens? I like rafa... as long as we keep winning, as long as we keep progressing. i know a lot has to do with the owners, and the fact that we have no transfer funds and are in massive debt. i know it has to do with the depth of the squad. but maybe spurs has had the right idea over the last couple of years. buy a lot of moderately priced players that show potential and give them a chance to be a good team. i'm wondering where are scouts are in the world because they're not picking up a lot of talent that people don't already know about. i dunno, i think the season is teetering on the edge, but at this point it can still go either way. in the end, i hope it all works out and we're in the champions league next season on the verge of winning the league

1. He treats players like machines, forcing them to fit into his system rather than, a la Shankly, creating a system around the actual skills of the players.

But do you not think he has created a system around the skills of his players? Built mainly around maximising the brilliance of Torres and Gerrard.

While this method of Rafa's works OK for the most part I think it does have the tendency to come unraveled under certain circumstances and it is difficult for the players' to respond during a game that is going against them because they are being forced to some degree to play against their instincts.

Rafa was using the exact same methods last year and we came back to win from losing positions more than any other Premiership team.

Who needs to keep hearing about the 2 mistakes you made in a game when you did 98 things right? To be honest it would piss me right off and I would start to resent Rafa over time. Maybe, just maybe, this is why we see all-too-frequent examples of a team that looks scared and, 10 times worse, looks like it doesn't even give a damn.

I think we're seeing a team that looks scared because that team has just (hopefully) came through one of the worst periods of form in the last 20 years. Confidence is a fragile thing and its been lacking from this team for the majority of this season for whatever reason. But rewind six months and basically the same team was absolutely destroying everything in its path.

Sorry to keep harping on about this but not too much has changed from last season and I think its only a matter of time before we string 7 or 8 consecutive wins together.