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In football, there are generally two schools of thought when it comes to squad rotation. One says that you figure out your best starting eleven and stick with it until the players' legs fall off. The other says that outside of the goalkeeper and central defenders, even the club's best players shouldn't be playing more than roughly three out of every four matches and that you should rotate the squad accordingly.
As Liverpool fans are learning this season, there appears to be a third school that looks to stay with a consistent starting eleven while rotating the centre halves, and neither fans of sticking to a best eleven or adherents of the more standard style of squad rotation seem particularly happy about it. Goalkeeper Simon Mignolet, though, insists it isn't to blame for the club's sometimes shaky defending.
"All the players who are there are professional enough to deal with that," insisted Liverpool's player of the season to date. "All the defenders here are very organised, motivated, and concentrated. We need to do a job. It doesn't matter as a 'keeper who is in front of me. I work day in, day out with them. I know what they can do and it doesn't affect me whether the defenders change.
"You want to keep clean sheets—that is what I am there for—but you are just one part of the team. It's what you look forward to before a game starts but if we keep winning 4-1 until the end of the season I'll be happy. The most important thing is to try to win the game."
And if Liverpool can indeed keep winning over a tough stretch of games to end December, the fans too just might stop caring about the odd own goal or poorly marked cross or if Brendan Rodgers keeps rotating a position pretty much everybody agrees is the one place you shouldn't rotate.
