Mahrez should be nowhere near the starting team at the minute!
As with all our players, notwithstanding fitness issues, Pep starts Mahrez whenever he’s the right player for the system to be deployed to deal with the strengths & weaknesses of the opposition.
If Pep wants to keep the field very wide to stretch their defence, to create space, then there’s a good chance that Mahrez starts because we don’t have another player who can play tight on the line, receive incredibly difficult long balls with panache and keep possession the way he can.
He gets a lot of unfair grief on here for constantly controlling, holding up and then recycling the ball sideways or back, but he does that because that’s exactly what Pep wants him to do.
It keeps the oppositions defensive lines stretched wide and controls the tempo of the game, it creates space for us and stops us from getting dragged into a helter skelter game that’d suit their counter attacking ambitions. And they can’t stand off him because he cuts in well and has a good left peg.
I think that there’s a fair chance that he will start, if he’s fully fit and looking good in training, because, in my pretty damn clueless opinion, Mahrez is exactly the type of player that they’ll struggle to deal with.
