Rotation and An Away Draw

Benitez's ideas on squad rotation are part of what sets him apart from other managers. He has an extreme view on the subject, which forms an important part of his strategic armoury.

Even whilst bringing unprecedented success, he was criticised for his squad rotation by the fans and the pundits at Valencia, and he has taken criticism from Liverpool fans on the same subject. For instance, Saturday's away draw against Sheffield United is being blamed by many Reds on Rafa's rotation of the squad, in terms of not fielding his strongest eleven.

Let's ignore for a moment that the strongest Liverpool sides have put in poor results against what proved to be weaker sides playing out of their skins against a top club at the start of the season. The argument goes that if Benitez had started with his strongest lineup yesterday, and continued to do so for every game, then we would win everything in sight.

Before 1965, this was a superb argument. The lack of any substitutes meant that there was less point in having decent players outside the first eleven, and the game was played at less of an athletic level so it was possible for players to recover more quickly from games.

The first subsitution made in the game was on August 21, 1965, when Keith Peacock of Charlton Athletic replaced injured goalkeeper Mike Rose after eleven minutes of their away fixture against Bolton Wanderers. The laws have since been relaxed to allow tactical substitutions during a match, and the number of substitutions and the numbers allowed on the bench have since been increased to the current three and five, respectively.

A tactical substition is one unforced by injury. A player can be brought on to change a game and get a goal: such as Liverpool's use of Davey "supersub" Fairclough during our glory days. Substitutions can also be used to effect tactical changes on the formation or system of play during a game. Adding width, changing the qualities of the forward line, bringing on a man marker or compressing the game are all common ploys.

It's a fourteen man game, not an eleven man game.

The use of substitutions I haven't discussed yet, and the point of this ramble, is substitutions for fitness reasons. During the course of a ninety minute match, players will tire. Doesn't matter how fit you are, doesn't matter how much training you've done or how many games you've played, at the end of a match you will be considerably more tired than at the start.

In fact, if you were to put a top team of eleven players who had just played ninety minutes immediately back on the pitch against a lower league team who had not played for a week, they would start at a considerable disadvantage.

Bringing on a set or two of fresh legs can change the game. Switching completely like for like forwards, or bringing on a fresh winger in the last twenty minutes can unravel a tired defence.

Even within the ninety minutes of a game there is a strong argument that, all other things being equal, rotating players through substitutions can win you matches. The eleven man team becomes the fourteen man team. If you have fourteen players of high quality and your opponent has eleven, then you have an advantage.

In the same way that a fourteen man match squad can be stronger than an eleven man match squad, a twenty two man squad can be stronger than a sixteen man squad over the course of a season. If all players are at the same level, are able to interchange seamlessly, and are happy to do so then this is inarguably true. If you field more players over the course of a season, then you will have a fitter squad at the sharp end when all the teams are more tired.

No-one can argue that the level of fitness and athleticism needed to survive at the top level of football has not increased dramatically in the last twenty years. Sport science, dietary regimes, improved facilities and better trainers have all contributed to this change.

If a footballer is running ten or more kilometres over ninety minutes, with changes in direction and a lot of short burst sprinting then this is going to be at least as physically challenging as any other sport.

If a player features in every game over the course of a season in a winning side, they are putting themselves through the mill sixty or more times with a break of less than a week in between matches. This is not going to be enough of a recovery period in between matches to ensure a consistent level of performance, so fitness levels are going to deteriorate over the course of a season. This is inarguable and can be seen on the pitch towards the end of every season.

The idea of squad rotation was hardly invented by Benitez. In it's purest form, the idea is to even out the appearances of your entire squad over the course of a season, thus gaining a fitness advantage. The other advantage is that your players will accrue experience of playing in different combinations and fringe squad members will obtain match practise, so that when changes are forced through injuries and suspension it's not such a big shock to the team.

Of course, it's nowhere near so simple as just having two teams and swapping them round every other game. Squad rotation does not imply wholesale change for the sake of it. If you change too many players then your team may lose its coherence.

It's also true to say that different positions on the pitch require more or less energy on average, so that goalkeepers use the least energy during the course of a game and wingers the most, with centre-backs, full-backs, centre-midfielders and strikers in between the two in roughly that order. Obviously the higher the expenditure of energy for a position on the pitch, the more rotation in that position is advantageous.

There is a certain amount of background rotation which will take place anyway, due to injuries, suspensions and lack of fitness. Using your subs to full advantage will also afford you a certain amount of rotation. On top of this, it's normal to keep a core squad playing together and only change a few players at a time. The idea is to average out appearances over a season, using natural wastage where possible, and making other changes where you feel you can get away with it. You can see this in operation to one degree or another in any football club in the world.

Where Benitez differs from the herd is that he embraces the idea of rotation and takes it to its extreme. He relies on more wholesale rotation as a strategy, and is not afraid to make twice the number of changes to his squad between games that most managers would. This marries well with his philosophy of tactical fluidity, where the team, formation and tactics are picked with the opposition in mind.

A Benitez squad is one without many superstars but where all the different players and combinations offer different possibilities. By concentrating on the detail and preparing to a nearly unrivalled degree, he hopes that his tactical ideas will be implemented successfully by whichever team he chooses for the occasion.

The strength of the squad Rafa inherited at Liverpool however, was not strong enough for him to fully implement his ideas in his first two seasons.

He used rotation to good effect with an injury-struck squad in his first season, winning the Champions League after sacrificing fourth place by fielding understrength teams in certain premier league matches. Glancing at the team sheet for games such as Crystal Palace away will readily confirm this.

He also started last season using a lot more wholesale rotation than previously at Liverpool, but uncomfortable with the results and the fact that his ideas were still not imposing themselves on our play, he started keeping a large core squad of players together after an indifferent start to send us on an unbeaten run before christmas. Changes were made in this period, but much less so than at the start of the season or for his Valencia team.

This season sees the first time that Rafa has a "complete" squad, in that he has two strong choices in every position. The versatility of the squad also makes for a lot of extra cover, as Benitez favours players who can play in more than one position.

It's clear that with his determination to rotate his players, and with Haifa in mind tomorrow night, Rafa did not field his strongest line-up on Saturday at Bramall Lane. Whilst it's not guaranteed that our best available eleven could have improved on the result, there will still be some blame attached for the performance to this selection decision. To counter, Rafa might say that his substitution plans were affected by two early injuries, but if the initial selection were stronger perhaps we could have won in any case.

My feeling though is to judge the strategy at the end of the season, not at the end of the first game. This game may seem like points dropped at this stage, but it's a thirty eight game campaign and the strategy is based on the long term not the short term.

In Rafa's first league campaign at Valencia, he rotated the team wholeheartedly and received immense criticism from the fans, many of whom were calling for his head by christmas. His team then famously went on an unbeaten run in the second half of the season and took the title by seven points.