Di Matteo rotates like fudge. In the build up to the FA cup game with us, the matches against Barca and the Arsenal match, the Chelsea forums were all saying how glad they were to have "the master rotator", their words...
In recent times, he played 3 of the 4 games without making epic changes. That may be why some of you are saying Chelsea don't rotate... In the two matches before the FA Cup against Chelsea I sat down to watch the Chelsea - Wigan and the Chelsea - Fulham games (because I wanted to watch them before making a post in our OMT), he played totally fudging different sides. The theme from Di Matteo is that he rotates people fairly, so they don't get upset about being rotated.
Do you guys not remember earlier in the season when Frank Lampard first was rested and then was rotated? AVB didn't play his experienced players all the time, he played their inferior younger counterparts, that's one of the biggest issues that the players had with him.
These count sub appearances, right? Lampard kept coming on for the last 5 minutes under AVB. Bosingwa's 39 appearances alongside Ivanovic's 41 seems to indicate sub appearances count... Even if they're just starts, people were also subbed off.
But Chelsea probably had more League Cup games than we did, they definitely had more European games than we did, they had the same amount of FA cup games as us. Going by Cech's 52 appearances, I'm going to assume that they haven't had more than 55 appearances, I don't remember Cech missing that many games this season.
Looking at that list, aside from Mata, the outfield players have had rests lately. (Whether by choice or by injury or suspension.) Mata did get rested for the first 75 minutes or so against Arsenal, but he doesn't get rested as much as the others.
Cole missed the Chelsea - Fulham game and came on very late into the Arsenal match, maybe with 20 minutes left?
I think Lampard missed the Arsenal game, he didn't play against Wigan at all....
Torres came on late in the Barca game, but Drogba was the striker that started that game, the FA cup game against us and played the entire match against Barca at the Bridge.
Miereles keeps making sub appearances, from the second leg against Benfica onwards, I think he has spent at least as much time as a substitute than starter.
Etc, etc. Recently, they've been rotated. Earlier in the season, maybe not so much. It took AVB a long time to "drop" Lampard for that first time, Lampard had played more minutes than any other Chelsea outfield player at that point.
Arsenal have no squad. Wenger refused to buy squad players for years, which is why it took an 8-2 for him to realize that just finding 16 year old boys on the street doesn't always work.
RVP was rested earlier in the season once or twice, but the Arsenal team without him was so bad he kept having to come on as a sub to save them with late goals, from then, Wenger decided to play him. He looks tired now and aside from a penalty, hasn't scored for over 700 minutes.
Walcott, has been playing quite often, it's hard to tell when he's tired because he's brick whenever he plays against defences that don't let him behind them. He recently pulled his hamstring and played on until he completely fudged it, so he'll be missing for a while.
Song doesn't really get rested, because he's their roaming DM playmaker. He drops into defence when Wenger takes off a defender when chasing a game, so they can't replace him...
Ramsey has missed a few games lately, although Wenger did persist with putting him on the left wing in a few games a little while ago, he is utter brick and again, tiredness is hard to tell. He has missed plenty of sitters (real sitters, not the type of things VDV has been missing lately), he loses the ball more than you'd think possible and in the Wigan game, Wigan had the ball for 2 entire minutes while Arsenal were losing in the second half, they finally won it back and the first pass was to Ramsey, who then backheeled it to a Wigan player... Ramsey came on as a sub in that match for Arteta who went off injured. My point is that he has missed games, but he's so brick that it's too hard to tell when he's tired and when he's just brick.
Koscielny just returned from a 2 game ban for getting 10 yellow cards. That's a rest, but not by choice.
Arteta was bought after the 8-2, he is currently injured (from the Wigan game).
Vermaelen has been used as CB and LB, so he's been playing a lot. Whenever he gets his form back, he gets switched to LB and loses it again, so he's having his worst season at Arsenal.
In the last few matches Arsenal have lost to QPR, Wigan at home and drawn at home to Chelsea. They have been utter brick and were getting slated by sky commentary against a 10 man Wolves side for being utter brick.
Their recent form isn't great, so I'm not sure how this reflects well for not rotating. Wenger has barely played Ox (he started him against Chelsea as Benayoun is on loan), but he hasn't really been rotating anywhere near as much as he could have done... Wenger usually does rest players though, but this season he hasn't really been able to. I remember one or two of the really old Arsenal defenders talking about Wenger resting people before they knew they were tired, so I know he does it, but this season hasn't been a shining example...
If he rests RVP he has to play Chamakh, he's not going to do that.
If he rests Arteta they lose the person that makes most of their passes, he doesn't like doing that.
If he rests Song, fudge knows who he is going to put in there...
His 2 fit backup CBs are Djourou and Squillachi...
fudge it, I'm just going to copy and paste their squad:
RVP is clearly tired but he has no options. Park never plays. Chamberlain has been one of their better players whenever he has played, but he hasn't been playing (Arsenal fans boo when he is subbed off and chant for him in games, but Wenger doesn't seem to share their opinion... Although it was hilarious when he got subbed off for Arshavin and the fans went crazy, RVP even said "oh no" and looked tinkled. After that he subbed Chamberlain with Henry to stop fans from booing.
)
Diaby is one of the most injury prone players in the league, he makes RVP look like Friedel. Wheelchair is out, Frimpong got loaned out and is now just out... Mertehoof is out... Gibbs is incredibly injury prone too...
I'm really not sure you can say "Arsenal haven't rotated and look how well they're doing"...
Besides, "Ramsey 41", that looks great, but in the league alone, 8 of those were sub appearances.
Compare that to the players you listed for us:
Walker, does he get subbed off very often?
BAE did get subbed off recently after getting a season ending injury (and playing on for the rest of the half and some of the second half), but most of the time, he plays the whole match. (And spends his time bombing down the pitch, as does Walker.)
Bale, does he get taken off?
Modric, 37 games... It looks like he's missed a couple.... Oh wait, they're from the start of the season when he wasn't tired... When was the last time he was subbed off or rested?
Kaboul, currently injured. Doesn't get subbed off very often.
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Tiredness is a factor. But no one is saying Spurs have imploded purely for one reason, this board probably lists about a dozen valid reasons along with some complete brick too...
I think people often oversimplify things, there are an incredible number of things that influence football teams for better or worse... After every international tournament you hear why England fails, people are quick to point to one reason which can be a valid reason or it can be complete gonads and they will blame poor performances purely on one thing... Then people look back and wonder why we can't win the world cup, because surely out of all the nations in the world, we should be able to win it... They'll go off on their crazy crusades and completely forget how complex football teams, football matches and football tournaments are.
I think it's probably better to be careful when saying something is or isn't a problem... A lot of things depend on perspective... For example, Real Madrid have a better squad than Barca, the media thinks so and the pundits all agree that this is the case. Barca looked really tired against Real Madrid, Real Madrid didn't look that tired... The next Real Madrid game was against a Bayern team that had just rested their team because they can't win the league... Real Madrid suddenly looked tired.
If a team is winning, they don't look tired apparently.
Harry is a fudger though, because at Christmas I remember him saying Modric was more tired than he ever was in his life before... So obviously players do get tired. *Gasp.*
In recent times, he played 3 of the 4 games without making epic changes. That may be why some of you are saying Chelsea don't rotate... In the two matches before the FA Cup against Chelsea I sat down to watch the Chelsea - Wigan and the Chelsea - Fulham games (because I wanted to watch them before making a post in our OMT), he played totally fudging different sides. The theme from Di Matteo is that he rotates people fairly, so they don't get upset about being rotated.
Do you guys not remember earlier in the season when Frank Lampard first was rested and then was rotated? AVB didn't play his experienced players all the time, he played their inferior younger counterparts, that's one of the biggest issues that the players had with him.
These count sub appearances, right? Lampard kept coming on for the last 5 minutes under AVB. Bosingwa's 39 appearances alongside Ivanovic's 41 seems to indicate sub appearances count... Even if they're just starts, people were also subbed off.
But Chelsea probably had more League Cup games than we did, they definitely had more European games than we did, they had the same amount of FA cup games as us. Going by Cech's 52 appearances, I'm going to assume that they haven't had more than 55 appearances, I don't remember Cech missing that many games this season.
Looking at that list, aside from Mata, the outfield players have had rests lately. (Whether by choice or by injury or suspension.) Mata did get rested for the first 75 minutes or so against Arsenal, but he doesn't get rested as much as the others.
Cole missed the Chelsea - Fulham game and came on very late into the Arsenal match, maybe with 20 minutes left?
I think Lampard missed the Arsenal game, he didn't play against Wigan at all....
Torres came on late in the Barca game, but Drogba was the striker that started that game, the FA cup game against us and played the entire match against Barca at the Bridge.
Miereles keeps making sub appearances, from the second leg against Benfica onwards, I think he has spent at least as much time as a substitute than starter.
Etc, etc. Recently, they've been rotated. Earlier in the season, maybe not so much. It took AVB a long time to "drop" Lampard for that first time, Lampard had played more minutes than any other Chelsea outfield player at that point.
Arsenal have no squad. Wenger refused to buy squad players for years, which is why it took an 8-2 for him to realize that just finding 16 year old boys on the street doesn't always work.
RVP was rested earlier in the season once or twice, but the Arsenal team without him was so bad he kept having to come on as a sub to save them with late goals, from then, Wenger decided to play him. He looks tired now and aside from a penalty, hasn't scored for over 700 minutes.
Walcott, has been playing quite often, it's hard to tell when he's tired because he's brick whenever he plays against defences that don't let him behind them. He recently pulled his hamstring and played on until he completely fudged it, so he'll be missing for a while.
Song doesn't really get rested, because he's their roaming DM playmaker. He drops into defence when Wenger takes off a defender when chasing a game, so they can't replace him...
Ramsey has missed a few games lately, although Wenger did persist with putting him on the left wing in a few games a little while ago, he is utter brick and again, tiredness is hard to tell. He has missed plenty of sitters (real sitters, not the type of things VDV has been missing lately), he loses the ball more than you'd think possible and in the Wigan game, Wigan had the ball for 2 entire minutes while Arsenal were losing in the second half, they finally won it back and the first pass was to Ramsey, who then backheeled it to a Wigan player... Ramsey came on as a sub in that match for Arteta who went off injured. My point is that he has missed games, but he's so brick that it's too hard to tell when he's tired and when he's just brick.
Koscielny just returned from a 2 game ban for getting 10 yellow cards. That's a rest, but not by choice.
Arteta was bought after the 8-2, he is currently injured (from the Wigan game).
Vermaelen has been used as CB and LB, so he's been playing a lot. Whenever he gets his form back, he gets switched to LB and loses it again, so he's having his worst season at Arsenal.
In the last few matches Arsenal have lost to QPR, Wigan at home and drawn at home to Chelsea. They have been utter brick and were getting slated by sky commentary against a 10 man Wolves side for being utter brick.
Their recent form isn't great, so I'm not sure how this reflects well for not rotating. Wenger has barely played Ox (he started him against Chelsea as Benayoun is on loan), but he hasn't really been rotating anywhere near as much as he could have done... Wenger usually does rest players though, but this season he hasn't really been able to. I remember one or two of the really old Arsenal defenders talking about Wenger resting people before they knew they were tired, so I know he does it, but this season hasn't been a shining example...
If he rests RVP he has to play Chamakh, he's not going to do that.
If he rests Arteta they lose the person that makes most of their passes, he doesn't like doing that.
If he rests Song, fudge knows who he is going to put in there...
His 2 fit backup CBs are Djourou and Squillachi...
fudge it, I'm just going to copy and paste their squad:
RVP is clearly tired but he has no options. Park never plays. Chamberlain has been one of their better players whenever he has played, but he hasn't been playing (Arsenal fans boo when he is subbed off and chant for him in games, but Wenger doesn't seem to share their opinion... Although it was hilarious when he got subbed off for Arshavin and the fans went crazy, RVP even said "oh no" and looked tinkled. After that he subbed Chamberlain with Henry to stop fans from booing.
)Diaby is one of the most injury prone players in the league, he makes RVP look like Friedel. Wheelchair is out, Frimpong got loaned out and is now just out... Mertehoof is out... Gibbs is incredibly injury prone too...
I'm really not sure you can say "Arsenal haven't rotated and look how well they're doing"...
Besides, "Ramsey 41", that looks great, but in the league alone, 8 of those were sub appearances.
Compare that to the players you listed for us:
Walker, does he get subbed off very often?
BAE did get subbed off recently after getting a season ending injury (and playing on for the rest of the half and some of the second half), but most of the time, he plays the whole match. (And spends his time bombing down the pitch, as does Walker.)
Bale, does he get taken off?
Modric, 37 games... It looks like he's missed a couple.... Oh wait, they're from the start of the season when he wasn't tired... When was the last time he was subbed off or rested?
Kaboul, currently injured. Doesn't get subbed off very often.
---------
Tiredness is a factor. But no one is saying Spurs have imploded purely for one reason, this board probably lists about a dozen valid reasons along with some complete brick too...
I think people often oversimplify things, there are an incredible number of things that influence football teams for better or worse... After every international tournament you hear why England fails, people are quick to point to one reason which can be a valid reason or it can be complete gonads and they will blame poor performances purely on one thing... Then people look back and wonder why we can't win the world cup, because surely out of all the nations in the world, we should be able to win it... They'll go off on their crazy crusades and completely forget how complex football teams, football matches and football tournaments are.
I think it's probably better to be careful when saying something is or isn't a problem... A lot of things depend on perspective... For example, Real Madrid have a better squad than Barca, the media thinks so and the pundits all agree that this is the case. Barca looked really tired against Real Madrid, Real Madrid didn't look that tired... The next Real Madrid game was against a Bayern team that had just rested their team because they can't win the league... Real Madrid suddenly looked tired.
If a team is winning, they don't look tired apparently.
Harry is a fudger though, because at Christmas I remember him saying Modric was more tired than he ever was in his life before... So obviously players do get tired. *Gasp.*
