No, of course I'm not. But I'm saying if you asked any fan of any club they'll give you a list of 7 players - not an endless one - who have missed a few games with injury. And in that list of your 7, 3 of them are regularly dropped when fit.
'A few' injuries? We're up there with Newcastle and United for most games missed from injuries. Jelavic, Diame and Snodgrass would have played every game this season if they could and between them have missed about two seasons worth of games.
The first 2 you're right, the 3rd we'll never know. Jelavic has played 26 games this season. So basically we've had 1 player badly missed through injury.
Snodgrass was not signed to sit on the bench and had what, 7 goals with Norwich last season? He's not a Hernandez or Ince who were dropped because they couldn't cut it in the PL. Dawson has missed a chunk of the season. Chester has missed a chunk of the season. McGregor AND Harper missed the same chunk - and surely one of them would have played during that period. Diame missed a chunk. I'm skeptical that Jelavic has only missed 7 games. This all adds up mate.
And I'm saying why is Snodgrass being held up as this saviour of the season and if he'd been fit everything would be fine? He was a key player in a team relegated last season. FACT. He's the slowest winger in the history of football with the turning circle or an arctic ice-breaker. FACT. We're already the slowest team in the Premier League. FACT. So why would he make a tangible difference? Of course he might, but everyone is talking as if he is the cure to all our ills. As I said before, if Hernandez was injured on his debut I'm sure people would be talking the same way about him. He's our record signing, do you think he was signed to sit on the bench? He's just turned out to not be as good as people thought he would. see my point? And Chester has been dropped on several occasions.
He's played 22 league games (plus three Europa League and one international). Three of his league appearances have been as a sub.
The injuries have been an issue but they're exacerbated by our inbalanced squad. The one that really affects us is Jelavic. We really badly miss him when he's out. N'Doye has helped fill the void, but essentially we've got two good centre forwards, the rest are ****. We haven't been unlucky with Hernandez. We signed a player who doesn't have what it takes in a physical league. Another Proschwitz. We took a gamble on selling Long thinking we could replace him and we were wrong. We only won 3 games between then and signing N'doye. Jelavic played in all of them and scored in two. Earlier in the season we lost countless points to late goals after taking Jelavic off and having nothing left up front and subsequently being penned in our own box. The reliance on him is huge and that one persistent injury has really ****ed us up. Diame and Snodgrass are new. They shouldn't be missed. We shouldn't look worse than last season when they didn't even play for us. Bruce should have had some other plan available for when Jelavic is injured. If we stay up, we still need another striker so we aren't constantly one injury away from catastrophe.
So in a nutshell, it's not down to injuries and it's bad planning by our manager in expecting the same player to put his body on the line week after week when he hasn't had a break during the summer.
Not at all. Every manager makes mistakes and I've said many times on here that even if we go down I can't think of anyone better to get us promoted again. Basically it's all down to the signing of Hernandez, if we'd signed somebody who was 'right' we'd have been fine and Jelly could've rested now and again. But even if Hernandez had been the player Bruce thought he was then he still isn't someone to lead the line when Jelavic is resting. Never has been and never will be.
Fair play,although I'm not yet ready to write Abel off just yet. He has shown ability, and he's scored a few. I'm hoping he's one those foreign players that take time to settle.
