As shown by Barca and to a limited extent Leeds in their game last night, having QUALITY players to step in when injuries ravage your first choice line-up appears to be a must if a team wants to progress. I would suspect that DOL knows what his first choice team is, at this stage of the season and through no fault of his own IMHO that YBR is not at that stage, especially when it comes to the midfield area. Some of us would have guys coming in, ten matches played who need time to adjust to the varied demands of the EPL, and lets face it they are an unknown quantity either judged as a individual player or how they will fit into the pattern and gell with the rest of the team. Inside football the phrase is -: nice problem to have, I question this throw away remark, suppose we play four in midfield, lets take a look, (a) Solano, Lee , Speed , Dyer (b) Gallagher, Acuna , Bassedas, Glass (c) Gavilan, Kerr, McGlen, Cordone. I am not a mathmetician, apart from the 3 listed above it would be interesting to find out, how many different combinations the 12 could supply for Bobby on a one for one basis. Working on the theory that Bobby know`s best, it is so easy for us to swap say Acuna for Lee but other things may be required, for example Acuna`s game is better when Bassedas is alongside him. the list is really endless. I could go on about pre-season planning etc , but I hope you have the idea of what I am trying to get over, I usually confuse the Mackems but I feel you lot bear with me, do not want to stretch the point.

-- Anonymous, October 24, 2000

Answers

I take your point Buff, I don't envy YBR the job. I would hope though, that a lot of that would have been been sorted out before the club buy. I'd have thought it was fairly easy to spot a player who plays well only when some other guy is in the side with him - look what happened to Sutton when AS left, so I hope our lot are either in the category who play well most of the time regardless of who they're teamed with, or are skillful enough to manage on their own, thankyou very much.

Either way, we have to sort something out, cos Saturday's performance looked very little different from KD at his worst.

-- Anonymous, October 25, 2000

I guess that trying players out together is the thinking behind initiatives like yesterday's closed doors match against Boro.

-- Anonymous, October 25, 2000

Good point Buff. Also goes for the defence. Often wonder (well..not that often perhaps ;-) )whether it would be better to play the complete reserve defence line-up rather than a mix and match patch up job that hasn't played together. ie drop a first team player even though available, in order to keep a reserve pairing.

-- Anonymous, October 25, 2000