Trading places only an issue if it all backfires

Oct 5 2006 Red Watch by Steven Kelly, Daily Post

NEWSFLASH: Rafa Benitez does not pick the same team every week.

As with zonal marking it only ever becomes an issue when we're losing doesn't it?

Sneering 'experts' call it tinkering, implying there's no method to the perceived madness.

It can also be called rotation, which sounds like a game of musical chairs.

These 90-odd matches that people like to quote include Chelsea, AC Milan, the FA Cup run - and a league season that accrued 82 points, our best total since 1988.

Are we to trash a man's methods based on a poor run of away form involving four games? Of course not.

Supporters will always sing a lusty version of "What have you done for me lately?" but there are limits surely?

We've been thrown into confusion by a lot of summer claims that we'd be the main threat to Chelsea, ironically by the same people who are slamming us now, but I defy anyone to say they looked at the early fixture list and believed we'd get off to a flyer.

And if a manager wants five new players maybe that 82 points wasn't an accurate reflection of where we actually stood in the first place?

Yet even people who'd normally hate our guts accept we should have won at Stamford Bridge, which would have put us level with the favourites.

That said, winners make history and losers make excuses.