Not in the circumstances mate no.
It's exactly what I have been saying about this bloke being proven true.
Some said he was 'protecting' the kids by not using them previously. I said that had already been proven not to be the case, by his use of Pozo last season, suddenly thrown into the team, playing out of position against top level, big, strong, players. The manager doesn't care, these kids are just pawns, to be used as he sees fit. Yesterday he was happy to chuck a whole bunch in, away from home vs the Champions. He hung them out to dry when it suited him, exactly as I said he would.
Some have argued previously, that the reason most of these have barely had 5 mins between them, is because it was 'too big a risk' to use any. I have argued that there is no risk at all. Yesterday a side containing mostly kids, held Chelsea until half time, despite being constanly let down by utterly shit 'experienced' players. The idea that one or two of these coming off the bench, over the past year or so, would have mortally wounded the first team, has been completely shattered & exposed for the utter nonsense many of us have always known it to be.
Then we compare these lads at their stage of development & think of all the kids who 'could' have played over the recent years, who were physically more suited to the task & have been discarded without even a trial run. Some written off as 'no hopers' because they allowed their standards & effort to slip during periods in the wilderness.
Then we consider the players picked, shoehorned into a 442 in order to suit his pathetic lack of tactical organisational skills, & as unbalanced in makeup, as many of his senior teams. It cried out for Kean Bryan to protect the awful, disgraceful Demichelis & Kolarov, but he picked a group of midfield kids who have barely made a decent tackle between them in their careers, to play against Hazard, Fabregas, Willian & Pedro & a totally inexperienced cb to play vs Diego Costa, next to two fucking clowns, in front of a shite goalkeeper.
The kids, I think, did themselves proud & nothing but positive can come of this from their perspective. This is not due to planning. It is due to their talent, & sheer luck that nothing happened to mentally scar them, as in the case of Boyata, when Mancini threw him into teams with similar disregard to his development & basically destroyed him.
Tosin was clearly shitting his pants & could barely kick the ball straight, but arguably defended better than the other 3. Well done lad. Barker was clearly nervous as fuck but still managed to skin a top fullback alive when given a decent pass. Those two will benefit from just getting on the pitch I think. Celina however, stuck out in no mans' land, didn't benefit. The two Spanish kids were getting used to it & particularly A Garcia looked like he's got a decent hour in him & was excellent at recovering the ball, very very promising.
Tbf to Pellegrini, he is probably the only person in the world who would have picked Faupala, who thouroughly doesn't deserve to be there on merit & totally unbalanced the team, but he put in a game effort. I suspect that will turn out to be his 'Macheda' moment, but well played to the lad & I hope I'm wrong. It is early days for him, tbf.
Fantastic that the kids have finally got started. I'm truly delighted for them, & we have a load more who could have done just as well or better.
Meanwhile, I'm counting the days for this con artist of a manager to leave & wish he had gone two seasons ago. He is completely unfit for the job & the luckiest man alive.
