Michigan Blue wrote:DoomMerchant wrote:honestly, of that list of starters -- 5 probably don't have Premier League chops, and to put them all on the pitch together, with some of our 2nd team'ers, was just an act of hubris. I can't find fault with RSC or Jo at all, but those 5 academy kids/reservists was a shocking move to play a Premier League club, away, when surely we'd be seen as a big scalp to take down in what is ordinarily a really well-supported, loud ground for away teams to matter.
when you add it up like that it's way less ambitious and not very thoughtful to field the team Mancini did.
cheers
Great post, 100% agreed.
I think in the back of his mind Mancio thought he had a squad capable of the quadruple on September 1st but was all out of sorts once injuries hit.
Fair enough, Balotelli, Richards, Lescott, Bridge, etc. would have featured if everyone was healthy, but injuries happen. I respect keeping the powder dry for Chelsea but keeping it
that dry bordered on the cowardly. Even Ancelotti was giving Anelka, Terry, etc. a run out tonight.
Mancini has hitched his cart to the next two results, and it had better be four points at a minimum or his gambit will have failed, and badly.
Mancini played pretty much as strong a team as he could have aside from resting a few players who are irreplaceable due to form or injury induced lack of cover. We could have put Kompany and Toure out against WBA but we still might have lost and if they'd gotten injured we would have been playing one of last night's starting centre halves against Chelsea.
A decision was made in terms of squad size that saw Onuoha, Garrido and Caicedo off while guys like Logan and Etuhu didn't leave. Sure, that was because they were less in demand. I don't really see Logan or Etuhu staying beyond their contracts.
You have to give players a debut sometime. 1st starts for 3 out of 4 defenders was probably a bit (a lot) much, but Mancini has said that he would have fielded a stronger team if there hadn't been so many injuries. We have injury problems now, but if we push the remaining players too hard we might end up with an even worse injury situation.
We have 9 defenders in the squad who we'd even consider playing, counting Boyata. 5 of them are injured. We're mostly managing because we have some good players left, but we're still basically hoping that we can get someone back for Chelsea or we'll have to move a midfielder back.
