Extended-Phenotype Still not sure which would be more damaging to his confidence, being dropped now ("you're a great keeper, you know that, but things aren't quite right at the moment and you need some time to work it out of your system. You are a big boy and I'm sure you can take this on the chin just like any other player") or being picked for another game or two where he produces more mistakes to have nightmares about, costing us more points, earning himself more bad press, fan rage and player frustration, and then being dropped.
I genuinely don't understand people on here who think players in a squad game get "destroyed" if they are rotated. Is Le Fondre in bits right now? What about McCleary when Kebe comes back? Had Gunter been dropped after his penalty would we have found him floating face down in the Thames?
Retarded mindset.
There is, of course, the third option of playing him, and him not making any further mistakes thereby ensuring our first choice keeper does the job intended for the rest of the season.
A goalkeeper being dropped for reasons other than injury is unusual and is, therefore, not comparable to an outfielder being rotated. There is a history of keepers having their confidence shattered by this so there is the risk of our putting our first choice keeper out of the frame for months on the basis of a few mistakes and a failure to show any faith and belief but feel free to ignore this history if it gets in the way of your jerking knee.
Having seen all three games, Federici doesn't have the air of a walking calamity around him in the way that a Simon Sheppard had, he isn't flapping at crosses or spilling shots or giving the impression he's all over the place, in fact he had a good game for the last 70 minutes of the Peterborough game. The mistakes are out of context with the rest of his all round game so there's no reason to think he's lost the plot.
Going forward in this season without him, (as if he's dropped McCarthy would surely be given a decent run), is in my opinion, a higher risk strategy than giving Federici a few more games to find his feet.