This season has been very frustrating in that we cannot seem to find any sort of momentum and this has to be down to the rotation policy.
Claude Puel has what it takes to be the manager of this football club for a long time, however he has made mistakes especially regarding the chopping and changing of the team and this has lead to a loss of momentum in the Premier League, which has all come to a head in the last few weeks since Xmas.
There are those that say our problems are all down to our failure to replace the goals of Pelle and Mane, but this is not strictly true, people fail to take on board that Charlie Austin was signed last January as a direct replacement for Pelle who had already told the club he wished to leave at the end of the season and Redmond although not a direct replacement for Mane has exactly the same number of league goals that Mane had last season right up to March.
So the scoring issue is not replacing the goals of Pelle and Mane but our failure to score goals from other members of the squad, not least Shane Long and Tadic.
This time last year both had notched 5 Premier League goals each, this term they have a solitary goal to each of their totals in the League.
That is 8 goals less than last season and that is a big chunk to make up, last season at this stage we had scored 28 goals, this year it is 19, so the facts are that it is not the goals of Pelle and Mane we are missing but the goals of Long and Tadic.
Given that we are only 3 points behind where we were after 21 games last season, you have to surmise that if either had just a couple of goals more eac then our position would probably be better than last years and almost certainly would have seen us 8th or 9th.
Of course that is all ifs and buts, but it does emphasise that even playing badly and with no momentum we are still a side that is capable of finishing well inside the top 10.
The staggering fact is that only once have we managed to win two league games in a row, that being back in September and that is just not good enough, against that up until this appalling 4 game run of defeats we had only been beaten twice in a row once as well.
So why have we stopped scoring goals ?
The answer is easy, it s a loss of momentum caused by the rotation policy of Claude Puel.
No one is questioning that he has to rotate, but the harsh fact is that at times it has had no rythme or reason, players at any level like to get in a vein of form and when they hit that form keep it going, but Puel's rotation has not factored form in at all, players who have had a great game one week find themselves rested the next and that is not good.
Puel needed to keep the core of his side intact from week to week and make changes subtly and take into account the form of a player.
This especially applies to forwards, both Shane Long and Jay Rodriguez are proven goal scorers, they have the track record, but they will tell you that strikers need games, both have been injured and need to get back their sharpness and that leads to scoring goals, again most strikers score in bursts, they get one and they get several in quick succession.
That being the case the question has to be asked as to why they are not getting those games.
When Rodriguez scored a brace against Bournemouth you hoped that he might find his form again, yet although he held his place against Spurs , for the following game he was dropped to the bench and in came Shane Long.
Long scored in that game against West Brom, yet for the following game at Everton he found himself on the bench with Rodriguez restored to the attack.
The Irishman had every right to be miffed about being dropped, he had come in and done his job and in normal circustances would be entitled to think he was the man in possession of the shirt.
Here lies the problem and not just in attack, we have lost momentum and players haven't got a clue whether they will be playing one week to the next, the rotation policy takes no account of form, it is almost as if the manager draws up the rota at the start of the month and sticks to it come hell or high water.
There are perhaps now only three outfield players who can consider themselves set in stone in the starting line up, the first is of course Virgil Van Dijk and the second Oriol Romeu, the third is Nathan Redmond, these three have started every Premier League game they have been available for.
After that only Jose Fonte is the only player to have played over 15 of the 21 league games and he doesnt look likely to add to that total of 17 at time of writing.
You can make stats tell you anything, but the fact that so few players have started over 3/4 of the games tells you something.
As I said right at the beginning, I still think that Claude Puel could be a great manager for this club, if he can get us to the position we are in at the moment with the side in such chaos selection wise, then I would like to see what he could do when he gets it right.
The future is in the hands of Claude Puel, he needs to get it right with his selections, get the core of the side playing together week in week out and make subtle changes, players want to know if they play well they stay in, its part of the incentive that spurs them on, once you take that incentive away it detracts something involuntary from their performance, in any occupation it is all about performance related incentives.
Those screaming for the head of Claude Puel would do well to have some patience, you cannot sack the manager after every run of losses, you need momentum in those in charge off the pitch as well as on it, look at Swansea, since sacking Gary Monk they have made poor appointments and chopped and changed and it hasn't helped.
The time to assess Puel will be at the end of the season, not while we are still in touching distance of not only the top 8 in the league but a Wembley final.