A few of us were discussing this on the Holte before and after the Blackburn game.
My view is that the term Rotation has been used by managers to cloak the muddle and individual issues which grow to dominate team selection.
If a manager has a player he favours the rotating of the players will always ensure that player (Pires) plays if fit and available. The corollary also applies that a player he dislikes (Ireland) misses out and is told that it is because the team is being rotated.
What is really happening is that managers are doing what they have always done and picking their most favoured players. The team sheet as used as both stick and carrot. It is disingenuous to pretend otherwise.
Forrest Gump said that life is like a box of chocolates. So is football management.
A good squad with a good manager is like an expensive box of chocolates. All good, all in their place all waiting to give pleasure and satisfaction to the paying customer. What a manager like Houllier does is fill a paper bag with sweets from the Woolworth's pick'nmix counter and pull out a handful on match days. I am very reluctant to be fair to Houllier because I believe he has no regard whatsoever for Villa fans but in his case his paper bag has been three parts filled by a Woolworths pick'nmix junkie MartinO'Neill.
Nevertheless for the FA Cup game at Manchester City bearing in mind the season we the Villa fans have had to endure so far and the week we have had to endure at the hands of our local enemies this was a game which screamed out to Houllier to make a fist of it. What did he do? He wrote out a team sheet which was a suicide note.
It is exactly what we got from Martin O'Neill in the latter part of his employment and David O'Leary for the entire length of his employment, a callous and arrogant disregard for the fans.
We have had from all three of them is an attitude of "what can you possibly know that I do not?". " I am the one and only David O'Leary/Martin O'Neill/Gerard Houllier - my finely attuned football instincts and deep understanding of the game tell me to bring on my best players when we are three goals down. It is called rotating the squad and it is a very modern concept you peasants would not understand and if you do not like it you better go and follow another club".
That we as a club having posted a loss of £38 million last year have sunk to a position where we play a team to play a vital match in what is all that is left of our season with a team which appears to have been drawn out of a bingo callers bag is utterly, utterly shameful but it will be called Rotation.
