Lets face it the league cup is the ultimate mickey mouse cup, played on a Saturday celebrated by the tabloids on the Sunday and Monday and all but forgotten on the Tuesday
Rafa Benitez has taken a lot of stick over the last week over his team selection, in last Mondays league cup defeat to Arsenal. I was disappointed too when i seen the starting 11, i was disgusted that Steven Gerrard was playing.
The league cup for most, apart from the top teams is still something worth winning, but Arsene Wenger got it right when he started to play his reserves in the league cup and the next season the other top teams followed suite. It is a great competition for the top teams with big squads to blood their younger squad members into first team football. It can also be useful to put players in the shop window that you would not usually risk playing....this has backfired spectacularly for Liverpool in Dudeks case... that was a shocking goalkeeping display
But Rafa got this one nearly right, Gerrard should have been rested but apart from that he was right to rest his main players. We had just played Aresenal on the Saturday and the game, 2 days later takes a lot out of players and because it was the mickey mouse cup why tire out our squad in a cup that even if we we went the whole way does not really mean so much....3 prem points are more valuable.
I have been a little disappointed over the last week not by the media, i expect it from them, but from so called Liverpool supporters that have started to question Rafa`s wisdom. It is right that a football manager is held to account by the supporters of his club but its a bit sad when our own supporters start to criticize Rafa when we have known from the start that he believes in resting his players by either rotating or not wasting energy on a mickey mouse cup and it has brought us success.
Things were different in the good old days when Liverpool were winning the milk cup, but nowadays with the champions league been so demanding and so many games and so much money to play for clubs cannot waste their time and energy and best players on small domestic cups.
Gerrard looked a bit jaded in todays game against Watford, could that be anything to do with last weekends exploits, i just hope he recovers for next weekends chelskis game, because chelski are well rested and so are we thanks to Rafa`s forward thinking.
Rafa was right!
.