At the beginning of the season, I had great hopes for my two favourite football teams, Bayern Munich & Liverpool. I predicted Liverpool would win their first EPL title and their first since 1989. I had even higher hopes for my beloved Bayern predicting they would recapture the Bundesliga title and would even get to the CL final!
And what disastrous campaigns both are having! Both are suffering from similar problems:
Injuries to Gerrard & Ribery respectively (although good to see Gerrard back in the second half against Birmingham)
Inability to score to win against packed defenses even with the lion share of possession in many crucial matches
Injury to the likes of Torres & Toni
And most crucially, players' inability to adapt to Rafa & Van Gaal's ever revolving tactical variations & player rotation systems (although Van Gaal has only been around this year whilst Rafa is notorious for doing this)
Both teams are now in serious danger of missing qualification to the second round of the CL, and losing too much ground to the leading teams in their respective domestic leagues. (both are quite a few points behind already)
Liverpool fans love Rafa & so far have stood by him, whilst Bayern fans have already started booing their team and murmurs of demands of retribution against the coach are beginning to spread.
In case of Bayern, whilst I was never a fan of Van Gaal & thought Frank Rijkaard was the best man for the job, I believe the legendary management team of Rumminegge & Hoeness got their transfer strategy badly wrong last summer and miscalculated some great opportunities in the process and as a result they should reappraise their strategy going forward.
As for Liverpool, I am not sure what the immediate solution is but Rafa has now had one win out of nine (6 losses) and surely the good will towrds him has its limitations.
And as a die hard fan of both clubs, I am still hoping for a major turn around in form & results by Christmas!
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