The time to bring on an inexperienced kid imo isn't when you're one goal up against a physical side. Antonio is a physical beast and well able and experienced enough to look after himself. We don't know if the kid would be up to it so why risk it. By all means bring him on when the game is comfortably won, or for that matter lost.BlackDiamond wrote: ↑Sat Jan 16, 2021 6:04 pmYes he did. Antonio was tiring from 65 mins but he played the full 90. Benrahma showed some sparks of creativity and looked disappointed when he was replaced with Lanzini who played his usual mixture of some things ok and others less so.
Which left Bowen who had carved some interesting moments but just not reached lift off point...but he was quickly replaced by Yarmolenko who offered a 15 min cameo of doing everything wrong in his exaggerated clumsy style.
That left the excellent Declan and Soucek to save the Moye's bacon plus special mentions for the back four. Again Dawson was v.good.
Had the "kid" replaced Antonio and all the others remained where they should be, then proceedings would have probably continued a whole lot smoother and more proitable.
But DM would probably say "winning is what I do" and keeping clean sheets is also what he does (atm) so I suppose we have to keep our traps shut.
Still, when you can make something even better - shouldn't you at least have a fucking look at doing so...
I'm well pleased with the result today because I thought we'd struggle. I suppose 1-0 counts as a struggle but if we'd taken the chances we created we'd have been comfortably home and hosed and maybe then we could have thrown on the kid and given Antonio a break.