This is quite interesting to read because I’ve had similar issues with many of our recent managers, from Poch to Conte, and even at times now with Ange. When these finally did make squad changes it often game in lower priority cup games where they’d make 9+ changes to the XI and the team would then lack cohesion and multiple players would look rusty as it’d be their first minutes in weeks or months.
I can only assume that the pressure they’re under forces them to make the decision that playing the best XI on paper for as long as possible will lead to better results, even though - in my opinion - when players are becoming clearly fatigued and overused, that best XI on paper is no longer the best and then those underused players are often unable to help change things.
Whilst I’m not gonna sit here and say I analyse every other manager, the only one I’ve sort of clocked on to that has quite a solid squad rotation game and sound use of subs plan is Klopp. He very often (I’ll stress though not always) makes a double or even triple sub at 60-65 minutes regardless of the scoreline, he’s also shown he’s willing to bench a key player here and there during congested periods and I think this substantially helps him to maintain his very intense way of playing. The squad players get respectable amounts of game time which keeps them from looking rusty when called upon and the key players get relatively decent amounts of rest to keep them as fresh as possible.
I the guy’s a monumental wet wipe but I can’t stress how good of a manager I think he is.
