Where is the fire?

I wonder if Brendan Rogers is feeling the pressure yet or if this is all a part of his plan for Liverpool. Suffering back to back draws to Everton and Newcastle respectively, teams which they should have beaten easily with the caliber of players at his disposal. A win against Newcastle would have raised them up the table quite considerably but a goal shortly before half time put a slight dent in those aspirations. They did however manage to claw back a goal with a brilliant long ball by Jose Enrique to Luis Suarez who skillfully moved past defenders and the goalie to put the ball in the back of the net. They had a chance to go ahead when Suarez ghosted past defenders to cross the ball to Jonjo Shelvey who was in front of an open goal but duffed it wide. Everyone makes mistakes but he choked in front of goal which ultimately cost the win. Brendan Rogers remains confident but it looks like he is just biding his time until January when he can buy new players. The question is, what will he do until then and who will he buy? Who will he sell? Will the new players make the difference needed? These questions are soon going to be on the minds of the fans who should be feeling disappointed. Give Rogers time, I’ve heard this said many times and I have to agree with and I like him as a manager but having played 10 games and very few being convincing wins, something needs to be changed. The style in which he is implementing is great and you can see the glimpses of brilliance but they are still quite a way off from where they need to be.

25 May 2005 Istanbul, UEFA champion’s league final. At half time Liverpool were 3-0 down to a very impressive AC Milan side, nobody gave them even half a chance but when they came out for the second half they scored 3 goals in 6 minutes to bring the scores level and ultimately winning on penalties. The passion, the drive, the fire with which that team played, that’s Liverpool encapsulated. I don’t see that in this Liverpool team however, they don’t have that drive, that want to win no matter what. If they had that they would have beaten Manchester City, Manchester United, Everton and Newcastle. You can have the best players in world, the best coach and the best system but if you don’t have the want to win it means nothing. They need to develop that drive again and a winning culture before we can even think about winning the League. Brendan Rogers I believe is the right man for the job, given enough time I think he can take Liverpool to the top again.

Need to find the balance

So I was about to blog about last nights SA rugby awards until I read an interesting article about Coach Heyneke Meyer who wants to change the system of SA rugby. The system he refers to is the one where the provinces decide when they rest their Springbok players and not SARU. His argument is that players are being overplayed and not getting enough time to rest and subsequently getting injured and thus not available for selection to the national side. Unlike New-Zealand where their national players are contracted to the NZ rugby union and not to their respective provinces, this gives them the ability to rest players without the consent of provincial coaches. I do agree that players are being overplayed with a hectic Super Rugby and Championship season; players do need time to rest. But let’s just say that we had the same system as NZ and we could rest our players at will so that we protect them from injury. How would we determine who the inform players are? You could have a player for example Deon Fourie who was named Absa Currie cup player of the year, in the form of his life but you would not have anybody to compare him to as you are resting all your Boks. So you couldn’t select him as you would have nobody to compare to. This would be unfair to the players who already deserve a place in the team but are being overlooked whether it be because they’re not Bulls or because the coach doesn’t like them, who knows, but my point is you can’t treat Springbok players like porcelain just because they’re Springboks. Let’s not forget how they became Boks in the first place, by performing at provincial level. They need to find a balance between Boks playing and getting enough game time to warrant their selection and being fit and uninjured to be able to play.

The other upside to resting them is you will be able to develop young players to be able to gain experience, but wait that wont matter because only players that have been Springboks before get selected. Robbie Deans had a brilliant plan, play young inexperienced players enough until they become young experienced players, had he not had so many injuries he would have had a young experienced team. We need to have a hard look at how our team is selected.