by muirinho »
25 Jan 2017 10:52
LWJ muirinho Obvious sub for Blackett last night would have been for Gunter to swap sides, and Watson to come on, rather than playing Ilori out of position
Obvious..
I think he does trust Watson, he's not been involved much in previous systems but has come in and been the obvious 2nd choice fullback. Every time he has played he has oozed class, and looks to be a real prospect. I would imagine Stam is trying to nurture him and not just throw him in the deep end.
Watson needs to play though, he can't gain much experience permanently glued to the bench. After all, Stam was throwing Ilori in the deep-end,
out of position. For me, that's the worst thing about drawing Man U so early in the cup, a cup-run would have been a good opportunity to get even sporadic games for Watson. As it is, all he's getting is occasional U23 games.
Stam has played Gunter at RB before, that's why it seemed like a fairly obvious decision to me. Perhaps he thought Ilori's pace would help with Fredericks, but Ilori was so positionally at sea, his pace didn't help.
I like Gunter, and he was good against Derby, but only a one-eyed fanatic would claim he was decent last night. At the final whistle, he just slumped on the ground rather than running to celebrate with the others, he looked knackered. We know he's going to be playing all of Wales internationals during the International "break" and he had less of a break during the summer than most also.
Unless Stam bites the bullet and plays Watson occasionally, we're going to hit a situation where we're hitting the business-end of the season where the only backup for Gunter has really never been tried - so what happens if he effectively gets burn-out? Even giving Watson 15 minute cameos at the end of games would help.