Firstly if he had to play fox I would have put Lovren over to cover for him. Secondly I would have played Fonte instead of Josh or even Yoshida. I accept that Gazza cannot be replaced until January..........I assumed from Pochettino's statement that he did not intend to bring anyone in during the window. He added he had more than enough players to do the job, or words to that effect and that the squad was adequate. For me he is saying they are all of a decent standard and up to the task...Hence my opening statement. I didn't mean to imply that Cody should have been in goal....Just that he would not have made such school boy errors.
Fonte isn't fit. He either has a recurring ankle or knee injury depending who you ask. But the issue whatever it is is on going. Hence why he can not start a match.
But he can come on 1 minute into a match. Have we ruled out that Fonte may have an acute earlobe strain? I've not seen it on the list of "maybe" injuries yet.
CBK subscribes to the "rub some dirt on it" school of physiotherapy, where injuries are classified either as 'non-issue' or 'mortal wound'.
Ok. I was only on about the keeper bit. You certainly can't say that Cody wouldn't have made those schoolboy errors though; he may easily have done the same.
Not necessarily, but I don't believe some of the reasons for injuries and their seriousness from whatever Saints source right now. We do not hear directly from the medical team for obvious reasons. I also don't really want to. The manager has his reasons for perhaps manipulating the truth about injuries for personal & tactical reasons, that's fair enough.... but I still don't buy into a player not being fit to play from the start of the game, but being ok to be on the bench.
Just to put some perspective on it; an 18 year old Hibs youngster died today. http://www.heraldscotland.com/news/home-news/teenager-dies-during-football-match.1387729734
Well that's very very sad, but doesn't really have much to do with today's Saints game. So not sure how it puts things into perspective as people die every minute of the day.
This is a strange one, but one I understand. It is about odds and a little gamble. How many games do you lose a CB early in the game? In fact, a lot of CBs go uninjured for a whole season, so if a player is 'not worth risking' to start, then they may be on the bench just in case. It is a situation that if there was no one else to play, then he would play, but ideally the minor injury/strain, should be rested to prevent further long term damage. In a really dire situation, then he would have played. No matter how bad today was, it wasn't an emergency.
Well, to me it made me just stop moaning about today's game for a moment or two and realize that no matter how bad today was for me, some things are worse and so maybe I shouldn't moan so much about today.
That's your perogative and as tragic a piece of news it is... I just didn't think it was appropriate to put it in this thread.
He put through a gorgeous through ball for Lallana to have an angled 1 on 1. Thought he actually looked good and wanted the ball when he came on.
Even the people around me who usually have no hesitation in screaming at him seemed to think he was alright. I thought he was pretty good.
Well if you don't believe Fonte is injured 'enough', then you must think Pochettino is blind/idiotic as clearly someone with a very basic grasp of football would gather than Jos is a huge step down. I personally think MP is far from being an idiot, which leaves us with Fonte carrying an injury. To paraphrase Sherlock Holmes, eliminate the impossible (MP is an idiot) and what you're left with, no matter how improbable, is the answer (Jose has some kind of injury they don't want to exacerbate unless it's an emergency).
If we want to bring through our youngsters and give them game time we have to accept we will lose some games while they adapt. I think Gazzaniga may have less presence than Boruc but it is easy to be critical of him when most of the team looked below par. For the third goal all of the team were shouting at Fox, however many others could have dealt with it. I felt sorry for him as he had no one in front of him and we missed an outlet on the left side. It was too congested to play through the middle and we ended up dropping deeper and deeper isolating our strikers.
I can understand that but then I think it is pointless to put him on the bench. Yes, we could then use him but why not Yoshida if it is an emergency. It reduces our options having two centre backs on the bench.
