There's rarely going to be a better opportunity to beat Burnley. Tarkowski, Mee, Cork, Jay, Barnes and Gumundsson all injured. Lennon and Hendrick released in the summer, and not replaced. Their bench is as bare as anything.
Naturally I'm hardly pleased at seeing Vestergaard starting. But I'm certainly not surprised to see Stephens dropped. As I've said elsewhere on here today, this season so far is a very small sample size, but based on what we've seen so far, Stephens has returned back to his old, dreadful self. I really hope it's just a temporary bout of poor form, but there was always a risk that he was just going through a temporary good phase (like he did for five months under Puel, before becoming awful again for the following two years).
Love how everyone pushes that cos of one season in the 3rd or 4th division where he played there. He's literally never played in midfield for us. Let it go.
Oh, yeah, our bench is really poor. I highlighted that last week. But even someone like Long is a upgrade on what they can offer.
