Re: Rearranged Fixture vs. Sunderland.
Lee the Blue said:
jay_mcfc said:
Lee the Blue said:
Id personally rather have a replay with Chelsea than lose to them. Call me old fashioned, but another day another game and all that. Obviously a win would be ideal, but to rather go out than have a replay is mind numbingly daft.
Not when you look at the bigger picture it isn't, but I do bow down to your superiority as a football fan. I will be delighted if we win, but I would rather lose than draw. If the reasons for that aren't patently obvious then you should go look at our fixture list.
We have a big squad that is designed to deal with crowded fixture lists. Or would you rather we went back to the pre-takeover days where we were out of every comp by the end of Jan, and thus playing out the string till next August?
And here was I thinking we entered competitions like the FA Cup to try to win them, not blow them off for fear of having to play more games. If you have a congested fixture list it usually means you are still in quite a few competitions, which used to be considered a good thing. We have a huge squad that should be able to cope/compete on all fronts.
Complete myth!
At the start of the season we had a 24 man squad. 6 teams in the PL had 25 man squads, 3 others have the same as us and the other half have less. The 2 smallest squads at the start of the season were Liverpool and Arsenal. with 19 and 21 man squads respectively.
Of our 24 man PL squad 2 players, Nimely and Wright haven't played.
In addition, of players who've been in PL games, Nastasic doesn't have to be in the '25 man' squad because he qualifies as under 21.
(This is why Arsenal's squad is so small, some 1st team players are U21s)
In the cups, in addition to these players we've used Lopes and Huws. (Anyone else?)
Now, in the CL the criteria is different and we may not have all the 24 PL players registered on the 'A' list. Players born after 1st January 1992 (21 or under on 01/01/14) can go on a 'B' list and play anyway. I can't be arsed looking up the rules on the domestic cups.
So, when the media start talking about City's big squad, they're talking a load of bollocks. What they really mean is that we've got more quality in depth than other teams (Is this what you meant too Lee?). In effect we've got 22 players that we can rely on to play in the PL (The 24+Nasty-Wright-Nimely-Boyata) and have given 3 others an opportunity in the domestic cups. (I promoted Nasty as he's been a regular and demoted Boyata to the ones being given an opportunity because he's not an established 1st team player). This 22 is what Mancini was aiming at, 2 players per position and Pellegrini is continuing in the same way. We're not there yet and probably never will be satisfied, but the difference in quality between who would get in our strongest team and the alternate player will become less (Obviously we want players with different attributes to suit different opposition).
Later:
Just realised that the FA premier league have got updated lists since 4th February and I'm not going through all that again. Our squad remains the same, available here: <a class="postlink" href="http://www.premierleague.com/en-gb/news/news/2013-14/feb/updated-premier-league-squad-lists-2013-14.html" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;">http://www.premierleague.com/en-gb/news ... 13-14.html</a>
