- Aug 31, 2005
- 1,254
- 494
The hopeless position in the tie was crying out for Vorm, Bentaleb, Carter Vickers, Carroll , Onomah and Winks. We did not need to play Lloris, Alderweireld, Alli, Lamela . So of course we lost anyway but more importantly did not keep enough of our key players fresh for Sunday. I hope we don't regret that.
I share your sentiment, and was not happy to see Rose play for 80 minutes last night either, but injuries happen.
I think Poch felt he had to play a decent defensive core to avoid another spanking last night, which might have hurt morale and pride more than the 1-2 defeat. So, on a more positive note one might add that we did not embarrass ourselves, and we rested Kyle, Eriksen, Mousa and Kane completely, while none of our hardest working players (Rose, Alli, Lamela) played the full match. Basically I think we're better off this way than we would have been had Poch fielded an even weaker team that got spanked, but I suppose we will know on Sunday. Let's hope we can beat Bournemouth while the teams around us (that all have difficult games) drop points.