SquishyMcSquish
New Member
- Joined
- Jul 4, 2018
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- 8,198
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- Tottenham
I'd argue it was extremely good luck you could play them every week for so long without rotating for injuries and dips in form. The downside of that rub of the green is you are bound to be more vulnerable when you have to do something makeshift.
The narrative here seems to be he is a bad manager because he can't deal with losing his best players. The "bad management" side of that is maybe not having rotated enough to have other options pushing for inclusion. It's true he hasn't been given the deepest squad to work with and has no say in that. Essentially, you are facing a tough period which is there by design from the moment you have a top first XI but lack depth. Maybe he could have done more testing youth players to have them raring to go.
I think 1. the criticism is a bit far-fetched, 2. the Caf antagonists seem to have found someone else to argue and drone endlessly (and often baselessly) over in the absence of Mourinho vs. Virus and it will be a long and irritating 2019-2020 if he did become our manager, 3. it will actually be interesting to see how it pans out, you are getting the excuses in early when it's actually a good opportunity to see whether he can deal with it well or not at all.
Do Liverpool rotate Salah/Firmino/Mane much? If you have a winning formula in attack you don't change it round. The likes of Lamela/Lucas have played plenty of games this season and stood in, but yes when all are fit we're starting our best XI regularly. Individuals have had dips in form but another one of those 3 will step up in that scenario. We've had Kane injured before and shifted Son to striker where he was very successful, but it's a different story when everybody is out and suddenly you're down to the bare bones.
Other options have pushed for inclusion, again we've had Lamela and Lucas play plenty, when Alli was injured earlier in the season or Son/Eriksen were missing we coped with that as well, but the problem lies in having all 3 out at the same time. There's no real replacing that unless you have Cityesque depth which as a club we will never be able to afford, and even then you'll not be the same. Testing youth players is a nice idea in theory and something we've done with the likes of KWP, Winks and Skipp, but there's nobody in the youth right now who is ready to step up to PL footballer as an attacking player. We don't have a Rashford or a Kane right now. Agree we're struggling due to a lack of depth, but that's not a failure of Pochettino's.
I agree it'll be a good opportunity to see whether we deal with it. I think we'll not do too badly or see any total collapse, but will perhaps have one or two bad results and scrape wins rather than putting teams to the sword, which is to be expected with the injury issues.