Nah they wernt that bad. They have always been a better footballing side. you can always see what Wengers trying to do, even if it doesnt work all the time.
Rafa? Does anybody know what direction he's going in? I know the Valencia template gets mentioned but i dont see much evidence in that.
On the contrary, you see lots of similarities with it.
Intelligent Ball playing centre-back. Pellegrino and Ayala were not hoofers, neither had plenty of pace to burn but both were intelligent.
Full-backs who do not necessarily have to run up and down the flanks the whole 90 min, and provide solidity to the backline.
2 defensive midfielders in Baraja and Albelda. A serviceable winger with Rufete and a hell of a player with Vicente.
The key here is Aimar. Even in Valencia, Rafa does not play his top 2 strikers together but will always be a combination of a support striker and a target man, Aimar/Illie ( though I recall he was not really that good) and Carew/Salva and then Aimar and Mista/Salva.
His philosophy is to control posession while pressuring and containing when losing posession.
If you look at the above which I try and cull as best as I can from the 2001/2002 and 2002/03 season, imho it is pretty clear that there are similarities. I admit I do not follow all the Valencia games at that point in time but from what I did watch, while it was not free flowing, one touch total football, it was effective and it was consistently good.
We do have good defenders in Hyypia, Carra, Agger and Skrtel. We don't have the best fullbacks but they are defensively solid. We have the best midfield pairings from Alonso, Gerrard, Lucas and Masch. In my mind, Rafa hoped that Kewell would be his Vicente and has given him every chance to get his form back while Pennant is our Rufete, a serviceable and alright right-midfield. Torres is our
target man but unlike Valencia we do not have a second striker. We do not have an Angulo or an Aimar or even Ilie. In fact the Liverpool team we have is better in quality than what Rafa had in Spain. We have Benni and Babel as well as Crouch and Kuyt was ok in his first season.
What the team needs is to buy into Rafa's philosophy. We are nearly there, the team needs to build that mental edge and they need belief. It will help if all the bollocks with the uncertainties surrounding the club stop and everyone focuses on building a winning team.