MTFCMusings wrote:gazza1988 wrote:If I was under pressure in my job I'd try to justify my weird choices as well. What I wouldn't do is justify them because I wanted to make another weird choice.
To be fair GC has a good point. Missing Mal is a big blow for a 4-4-2. We have no backup, or rather no natural backup.
To be pedantic we started 2 right backs and neither of them played on the right hand side. From a 'natural position" point of view we had Stech, Rawson, Sweeney, Charsley, Maris, McLaughlin, Gordon and Cook in their natural positions. That's 8/11 and we did OK, Perch has done fine but has played RB most of his career
I'm not convinced we are fit enough to pull off wing backs for a whole season, we can barely pull it off this early in the season. You swap a CB for Benning then the only player "out of position" yesterday was Perch. We definitely would have done better imo.
Personally I think he's spoke to the 3 CB and promised them they will play most, if not all, games. He either upsets one of them or he keeps them "happy" by playing them out of position or play a back 3.
I wouldn’t agree that Perch was out of position. He’s plenty capable of playing central midfielder at this level and when he was younger at the level above.
One of the 3cbs would have been benched last night if Benning was fit. I have no doubt about that.
I did say I was being pedantic.. I know Perch plays fine in midfield. Technically he's out of position.
My doubts about dropping a CB come from the stevenage game (I think, the games aren't very memorable) where we had 1 sub left (that he didn't use) and went with a back 4 with Menayese at RB and pushed O'Keeffe onto the right wing. Perfect opportunity to sub a CB for Gordon and not have players out of position. We will see Saturday what he does. He's got to fit Lapslie in somewhere along with Benning if he's back.
I feel the two players to make way would be Smith and Gordon. However Cook appeared to argue with the bench, just before he was subbed, so he could be dropped entirely.
All I know is on a run like ours you go back to basics with players playing positions they are used to. Perch can certainly play midfield and is experienced enough for it to not affect him too much. Our back 3 are 22,23 and 24 years old. O'Driscoll is 21 and O'Keeffe is 22. We are getting these young lads changing roles and/or positions and we are annoyed that they start making mistakes. Menayese looked lost at RB, positional he was at CB half the time. That's not his fault, he's not a right back and I highly doubt he has enough experience yet to be effective. If we were up the top end of the table then you can experiment without too much pressure. We aren't, we are in a early relegation battle, the pressure is enormous.