SCIAGURZZZZZip I’d like to see two up front for this one and bring in Puscas and drop Semedo. Also Holmes in for Yids.
Echo my thoughts slightly although would go with the following:
Rafael
Yiadom
Moore
Morrison
McIntyre
Richards
Laurent
Rinomhota
Olise
Baldock
Joao
Southwood Esteves Holmes Gibson Tetek Ejaria Semedo Aluko Puscas
Just don’t feel the 4-2-3-1 is as balanced without Meite and perhaps Swift too
Not sure Puscas can start yet - otherwise he probably would have come on sooner
You’ve complained about Semedo not being creative, so you have dropped him for Liam Moore. That doesn’t make sense to me. It allows Richards and Yiadom to play higher, yes, but I don’t see that compensating for the loss of Semedo. Maybe if Araruna was at right back.
Similarly, I can understand feeling like Ejaria hasn’t contributed enough recently, but I don’t think dropping him for Baldock is going to make us more productive.
I don’t really see much choice other than sticking with the same team or bringing in Aluko. There are changes that could be made at the back but they’re not likely to sort out our creativity issue.
Can see the case for resting the big three, but in the short term we’re still more likely to win with them on the pitch. If we rested all three of them then we’d have a front four of Aluko, Semedo, Baldock, and Puscas, which should really be good enough to win games at this level but Baldock is horribly out of form and Puscas is recovering from a serious injury.
In fairness, a front four of Aluko, Semedo, Ejaria and Baldock was enough to comfortably beat Luton, with what you’d call the “weakest three” all contributing to at least one goal
The idea behind it is a bit of a refresh as we appear to have hit a bit of a snag. Can fully understand that (A) it’s not ideal and (B) our away form has actually remained pretty strong throughout with only the home form dropping
Just think that as others have alluded to, too much emphasis on plan A but not enough on a plan B. Which is great when you’re winning games, but it also explains our poor record from losing positions