Clunk wrote:
Ricky1985 wrote:
It's also what can happen when you don't get slaughtered with injuries from game one. Imagine what our lot now could do with our best players playing 30+ league games each?
Which was what happened to that side isn't it? Rosicky injured, RvP injured.. many players suffered injuries here and there resulting in the likes of Senderos, Eboue (RW), Hoyte, Song, Denilson, Gilberto (in defence), Diaby (LW) all playing. The amount of injuries and lack of depth in the squad costed us badly.
Of course it will look stupid if you are comparing to the side now and how the players of that season faltered subsequently, but make no mistake Gallas, Fabregas, Hleb, Adebayor, Van Persie, Rosicky were top players at that time. Clichy, Sagna, Flamini, Toure also had excellent seasons.
We put all our points on the board early and we had basically everybody fit. Rosicky got injured in January, but most of the players that formed the spine and came together to form an effective and balanced team were fit from the start until March or so, when it all started to fall apart.
It's about consistency of selection, as we saw this season. You don't need the best players in the world, but you find a system that works, you keep picking the players that are doing well and you build a head of steam. Most weeks in the first two thirds of that season we picked Almunia in goal, Sagna, Toure, Gallas and Clichy in defence, Rosicky, Flamini, Fabregas, Diaby/Eboue in midfield, with Hleb playing off Adebayor up front. The fact that I know that 8 years later tells you how consistent the selection was. In the seasons since, we've rarely, if ever, been fortunate enough to put our best team, or thereabouts, on the pitch from the start of the season and then deep into it. We've always lost key, spinal players every single season, and we've had no consistency there in those key positions because of it. Impossible to from a balanced and effective team when the key components keep on changing from one week to the next.
