I would agree if the manager was consistent with this approach, but some players continue to get minutes even though the reverse applies, i.e., game after game they're shite, yet they continue to feature. Is that because they show more during training!
Well, option one: The manager is a Bizarro world freak, so the better a player plays, and the more the other coaches tell him to play this player, the less he will play, the better he plays in traing ground maches, the fewer minutes. Fun!
Option two: The manager has his tactical ideas that favors a defensively intensive, loyal and known operator, but he will also adhere to what wins games, who objectively plays the role best and contributes most, and who the other coaches say are the hot shit comin’ steamin’ through like a pile of piledriver dung beetles supreme. If a defensively intense, loyal and known RW plays like dung for many games, then a potential dung beetle can overtake him by showing Ten Hag and also the others how really to play an inside pass going on the outside, and if Ten Hag is a bit sceptical, if Fletcher vouches his life on said player (‘you really should have seen him, boss, made Antony look like paint drying’’) it will earn him chances over a player with two goal contributions since May. But it will have it’s limits. If a non-suicidal coach gives a player 50 minutes in a season where debutants and a 19 year old LW are preferred, yes, you are right, Amad has probably pulled up so few trees in trainig that noone has found it worth giving him time over Antony, Garnacho or Forson. Even given the absence of Judas Sancho and Next Year Pellistri. According to most couch experts, Antony has been so bad that even my auntie would see that I’m a better option, yet you’re telling me that an enthusiastic group of McLaren, Van der Gaag, Fletcher, Hawkins, Clegg and Owen saw Amad rip it up in training matches, in exercises, in the gym, on the track field, but they just couldn’t convince Ten Hag to give him a few minutes against Newport?
Sounds unlikely. The version you mention, were Amad simply shows less in training every day than his competition, which we would have no clue about either way, sounds a lot more likely.
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