by thebigbangtheo » Mon Apr 22, 2019 3:20 pm
There is a reason why certain things are part of the unofficial rules of football and one game at a time, or never looking beyond the next match is one of them.
Rotating to rest players in anticipation of our following game against Wolves was wrong, for the simple reason that we lack the squad with which to be able to feasibly do that.
In my opinion at least, only City and Chelsea are properly equipped to do that to such an extent in being able to have and afford 2 bonafide first team players of competing ability for each position, as I don't think even Liverpool for as good as they are, could afford to swap out all their front 3 or be the same animal with both VVD & Joe Gomez missing at centre half.
Same as when you're playing, you never feel tired when you have the ball, but have to run without the ball for even half the distance or endurance and you find it absolutely knackering.
Whilst it may have been prudent to change one, maybe two players from our previous game and even then unlikely that both would be from the same position, wholesale changes were uncalled for.
Momentum had been built and we were winning games it had been klaxoned we were were more than likely to lose.
Yes, you might even be appreciative an interlull right now more than at any other time in the season, but at the same time you can now truly relate to former champions and winners of trophies when they say straight afterwards about just how hard it was to achieve and that they had to work, and dig deep and then deeper still because that is what winners do.
I may well be wrong and just remembering when real men played, but I think players would rather run themselves into the ground and risk injury even, in their bid to achieve at the business end of the season than take a breather and let someone else put in a shift for them.
To me, the trap was all the stats and quotes regards our home record being comparable to the best, how we were finally getting to grips with our ridiculous away hoodoo and the air of having dismissed Palace as a genuine threat regardless of their own good away form, and Emery fell into it head first.
When Stevie G famously said those words, I do not think for one moment that his sentiment was borne of arrogance.
How I see it is that yesterday, arrogance from the management, players and fans to whatever degree people will take ownership, was both foundation and cornerstone of that defeat and air of deflation as opposed to anything that Palace did to achieve it other than not look a gift horse in the mouth.
Last edited by
thebigbangtheo on Mon Apr 22, 2019 3:41 pm, edited 4 times in total.