Is it Rafa or the players? That's a million pound worth of question right there. Honestly for me, it's a bit of both but truly if you count on the performance on pitch, it's the players you have to blame. When it comes to substitution, I think it maybe Rafa's fault or the players fault. But I'm trying to be fair in my opinion here.
Rafa worked with a list of players that performed so great last season barring Alonso and Hyypia. This season however things didn't go well according to plan. Some might say that the departure of both Alonso and Hyypia really damaging our fundamental but to be honest, a club like Liverpool shouldn't be blaming for those two players for our sudden demise. Alonso played a big part in our midfield last season with his sensational passings and controls while Hyypia has been solid whenever he been called into action. But prior to that, Alonso didn't played that good 2 seasons before and Hyypia didn't feature regularly in our squad. By saying that we really missed Alonso it's like admitting that we were totally reliant on him and we're nothing without him. It's not the case here as we all know apart from Alonso and Hyypia, Rafa has bought in Johnson and Aquilani to strengthen our squad. So there's no question to our overall squad strength eventhough Rafa didn't use Aquilani as frequent as we wanted him to after he's fully recovered.
But if you look at our squad all together, there's still some weakness. We do lack in squad depth comparing to other big clubs in PL. It's a fact but it's not a fact that Rafa didn't tried to sign some good ones. I always said and believed that we are currently having transfer kitty worth of a club like Hull and Wigan. Didn't Rafa tried to sign Simao, Alves, Jovetic but because our failure to compete in the transfer market caused us. Add it up to the incompetency of our then Parry to resolve any transfer issue, we ended up having just average squad players. We didn't deserved to have players like Voronin, Degen or Pennant in our club. Comparing their standard to us is far from equal but due to our lack of spending power we have to lower our standard by signing them.
Some has questioned why Rafa let go those players (Bellamy, Sissoko, Riise, Alonso etc). If Rafa didn't release those players then how on earth Torres ended up here? I don't know about other clubs but I think Liverpool currently being the only big club that has to sell in order to buy and that's pretty pathetic considering our stature and history. It doesn't help when you have owners that talked too much but less action. They spent less but hoped too high. They should considered themselves lucky to have Rafa as manager as I don't see other managers will do well under heavy constant financial constraint.
So for me if you ask whether Rafa should be blame or the players, I can only offer this: Rafa's job here is to identify players that he felt suited to his system and forwarded it to board. He also responsible to determine the formations and tactic that will be used during games and select players that he thinks capable of getting the job done. The players on the other hand, have to attend every training session and played their hearts out when being selected. The owners, back the manager's plans and try sign every players suggested. Rafa's fault was he's too reliant on some players that clearly didn't performed. The players (I'm not trying to name anyone) when selected didn't played as per instructed and played with no passion and determination. The owners clearly didn't have the financial power to back Rafa.
But for me the blame should be put on our shoulders. Why? I've read some of your post on other threads and I noticed you're saying the same thing; the passion is gone. Anfield hasn't been the fortress we known. There's no cheer when we're down, people leaving 5 minutes before time, letting opposition's fans took control of Anfield. On the net, there's divided opinion on Rafa, the players and the owners. What the hell is that? So, if you want to seek whether on who we should blame, I think the answer is us.
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