[Xgenre]

I agree last weekend was terrible. It's a case of deja vu for a lot of us. Here were some of my inner most thoughts. What? Again? Putting on these suspect players who hasn't been performing? And these players like Voronin really didn't perform in the end. Heck, where's Ngog? Surely Ngog can't be worse than Voronin?

As the match progressed, I just felt I can't trust Rafa to make a normal logical decision that other managers would make. Like putting on more attacking players to try to win the game. Whatever happened to taking off 1 central defender and adding another striker? After all, losing 2-1 and losing 4-1 is the same what.. Zero points to us.

But then, think about it. Rafa, for me, has either been super brilliant or super flop in his tactics for us quite often over the past 5 years. He likes to change the tactics according to our opponent's style. Quite often, we don't even know what kind of team will be fielded. How often will you wonder ('Eh.. how come the 1st 11 players are like that?') when we see our teamsheet during a live broadcast?

When he played Biscan in central midfield and we drew with Juventus in ECL... Wah Rafa is the man leh. When we won 4-1 at OT (last season) and 2-1 2 weekends ago, we all thought Rafa was the most brilliant manager ever man. Then there are also the flops. Resting Crouch in the World Club finals. Resting our top players when we play the lesser teams away and constantly getting burnt as a result.

My point after all this is... we got to take the good and the bad parts of Rafa's style of management. It stinks when he gets it 101% wrong like last weekend at Fulham. Then against the odds, suddenly we look like we can kick the shit out of any team man... That's rafa lar guys.. I'm not so sure if we should sack him. It doesn't make sense to throw the captain out of a sinking ship. We should be trying to steady the ship and plug the leaks instead of changing leadership in the midst of a crisis. Even Houllier was asked to leave only at the end of a terrible season, to minimise team disruption.

If we sack Rafa, will things be better, I do wonder? The worst thing to do is to sack him because we are angry with short term results. Why? Because the new manager will still have to deal with 2 stingy Yankees. Without any real transfer budget (Rafa only spent what he got from sales this season), will a new manager be better? So far, only Arsene Wenger doesn't built his success on big transfer budgets but his success really took seasons to build. Even MON at Villa spent a lot to build a successful team.

my humble 2 cents worth. still damn disappointed at what happened at fulham but only decided to type out my thoughts after 2 days.