Team for next two games?
This is a tricky one, as the starting 11 from the past two games has worked wonders, but some of them are undoubtedly gassed. I feel as though we should rotate with the view of having these same starters for the Nottingham Forest game. Bayo is an obvious one to rest, as is Horgan, who is clearly running himself into the ground by the end of each game.
Defence is a tough one, as you would feel Stewart and Knight are young and spry enough to play every game as needed, but Taffs is fit again. We still have no backup for JJ, and despite the excellence of McCarthy, Grimmer is undroppable right now. So what do we do here? I think it still might be beneficial to rotate in Taffs, but how do we drop Stewart OR Knight for such a move? I feel as though Stewart is simply a permanent fixture right now, as he is developing into an extraordinary talent, even at this level.
Midfield depends largely on Adineran. If he is good to go, I am hoping those young legs can take two more games, and the same with Thompson - until Gape is fully match fit, I would love to avoid dropping either of those if they have the fitness.
The most obvious questions going forward seem to be who to bring in for Bayo and Horgan, and whether to give Wheels and Kashket a rest? Scottie looks such a menace right now, that it is tempting to leave him in and see if Uche can grow into the Bayo role, with Fred coming in for Horgan. An alternative to could be perhaps bringing Samuel in and moving Knight into midfield as Taffs comes in to the defence. With Uche still looking a little off the pace, I think I might lean Samuel for the Birmingham game.
Any thoughts? Rotation seems so much easier when a team is not playing so well, but coming off these two games, it becomes a lot harder!
Comments
We've got until Wednesday so hopefully play the same team at Birmingham - more important to think about the next game than anything beyond that at this stage. Need to keep putting points on the board. Birmingham will be incredibly hard to break down, so I feel we could do with a unique threat - i.e. Bayo.
It wasn’t so long ago that we thought Stewart couldn’t play two games in a week.
Did we?
Where are we with injuries overall? I admit I've not been following things closely since the Millwall match but yesterday was fantastic.
I saw Darius and McCarthy weren't in the squad yesterday. Are they hurt or just down the pecking order?
Surely that was only Darius @Chris ?
He played nearly all of our games last season, but prior to that I think (as ever I might be wrong!) there was a tendency to rest Stewart for midweek fixtures.
By 'we' you of course mean 'you'. This using of we when expressing your own view is being used alot in politics and the media at the moment. It is really annoying and confusing
Surely, if anything ten it should be ‘I’ rather than ‘you’ @Right_in_the_Middle .
then
Correction. I’m wrong.
@Chris Agreed. He had some sort of long-term problem. A calf injury maybe? It ment resting him at times. I was watching him yesterday, making block after block again, wondering what we'd do if he got injured. It's fantastic to see him playing so well, so consistently and so regularly.
I really don’t understand the need to be resting players this season unless you’re Charles, Akinfenwa or Bloomfield. The majority of our squad should be fit enough to be able to give 100% every 4/5 days.
Unless we get to the FA Cup quarter final we are likely to have played less games per week of the season than in 2017/18 and 2018/19.
We also have a much bigger squad, injuries permitting.
Roll on Wednesday
Someone asked me about a month ago if we had any players that might attract interest from bigger clubs. At the time, I could only think of Anthony Stewart. Hands off, I say!
You're trying to aggressively pounce on people again. I thought you hated it when people did this to you.
@Chris is perfectly correct to say "we" as in the club.
Stewart kept picking up big injuries each season and Gareth himself went on record to say how they were looking at ways to avoid it, one of them being resting him for midweeks.
@Chris Spot on. Gaz mentioned it in his press conferences at the time, Tools was struggling and we were sensibly protecting him. Great to see him fit and ever-present these days.
@wwfcblue i sort of agree but in fairness they are all really having to put in a hell of a shift every game so they must be fairly shattered
@wwfcblue Surely the reason we have "a much bigger squad" is precisely for that very reason? We now don't have to play players with injuries. As such we get more out of them when they do play. These lads are not workhorses that can be flogged to death & easily replaced.
Couple of references to “a much bigger squad” earlier. I’ve not done a headcount but is that really true if you exclude younger players signed essentially as members of the nascent B team? Mind you, in the light of Anis Mehmeti’s two promising cameo appearances (and positive comments about the three other youngsters who joined at the same time), it’s hard to differentiate.
I think 26 players was the biggest the squad ever was last season. With Anderson and Linton out on loan and if we count Burley and Georgiou as development players still, we're at 26 now.
But there is a squad cap of 25 'senior' players (over 21s and loanees of any age). We're up to 24, so we shouldn't really be any worse off than the rest of the league in terms of numbers.
After this week's games vs Birmingham and Nottingham Forest (doesn't that sound impressive), we then don't have a game for a fortnight, due to the international break. After Brentford on Nov 21st, it is then 8 games in 4 weeks.
Charles looks to have dropped from absolutely critical defender for us, to about 4th choice now. That's presuming Tafazolli is ahead in the ranks. Maybe Wednesday's line up will tell us that.
Will be interesting to see how Gape is re-integrated too. Thompson and Adeniran look to have a superb partnership going on.
Pattison and Freeman seem well out of things right now.
Really hope Adenarin is ok. He looked a bit below par yesterday. Not sure whether it is relevant but didn’t he slip over a couple of times at relatively important moments? Hope it was either exhaustion or a minor knock.
I mean the reason for him having to be subbed - not for slipping over!
I thought he looked a bit under the weather, but hoping it's nothing long-term in any case.
Touche, @chairboyscentral, touche.
@Shev I thought Bayo was spent after about 70 minutes tonight. Where did he get that second wind from?!
@chairboyscentral he is immense, isn't he? It is a joy to see these second tier defenders unable to handle him.