By Hughie Southon
This is not a time to be overly harsh on David Moyes although the worries over current form are not to be under-estimated.
Newcastle wasn’t great but thankfully we were saved by a late Mohammad Kudus goal while Aston Villa was vey bad and Olympiacos was equally as unwatchable.
The manager has made much of how he will use the squad and how he intends to rotate this season but there’s a problem immediately because he doesn’t appear to have a squad where players can be rotated in the Premier League.
Frankly, from what I have seen, with the exception of Mavropanos, Fabianski and Kudus, we have a first team and a reserve team and that’s why we lost in Greece.
We played individuals who had had so few minutes they looked as though they had been introduced to each other an hour before the game. Was it any wonder we were beaten?
The scenario is even worse on the left side of defence where we have no cover of any consequence at all for Emerson as we may discover tomorrow.
Moyes made the point that he is tempted to give Kudus a PL start but it’s difficult as you can’t have too many good players.
True David…sadly we don’t have them beyond the first team and those mentioned.
Spot on, Hugh! A first team and a reserve team is what we have. And they are strangers to each other. A big failing of the Moysiah. And he just keeps swapping Danny Ings for Antonio after 60 or 70 minutes etc. No Mubama, out up and coming striker. You would think Moyse would have woken up by now and see that he has a responsibility to rotate some of the players so that they can be ready to step up at any time and fit in seamlessly. Maybe he will if we find ourselves 4-0 up against Everton with 20 minutes left?