I think we should "tank" this next Carabao Cup game against Palace - rest the key players and try some younger, newer, or crappier ones.
Rest Bruno, Hojlund, Varane, Lisandro, Casemiro, Rashford. Or give them max 30 minutes, like a more intense, shorter training session. Especially Hojlund, since his minutes need to be carefully managed(load management) because of that potential back issues stuff.
We have to play the only two fullbacks we have available(Dalot and Regulion), that is going to absolutely kill us this year until Shaw, Wan-Bissaka come back two months from now. Plus Malacia, don't know what's happening with him, haven't heard anything about him in ages.
Start the two between Evans, Maguire, Lindelof. Then Amrabat, Hannibal, Eriksen/McTominay or maybe Mount if he's ready for some minutes. Pellistri and Garnacho on the wings(full game for both of them, definitely) and then try to force Martial to play full 90 minutes(I know it sounds impossible). If not substitute him for Rashford at around usual 60th minute mark. We can try the new Turkish goalkeeper(Bayindir) also, but I wouldn't mind seeing Onana, I guess - it's the same for me.
Losing this game would be pretty insignificant considering all the on and off the pitch issues we have at the moment. We won that trophy already last season, anyway. If we win this game, great, whatever. Then match we have against this same very opponent(on the same stadium even) on Saturday is much, much more significant. Then, we go full strength.
But I suspect that ETH is not going to do what I suggested above and he's going to go full strength, totally unnecessarily and he's going to piss me of. Which could make injury crisis that we have even worse than it already is, if it's even realistically possible(theoretically sure is...).
Tanking a game will do wonders for our confidence won't it.