Originally Posted by
AucklandRover
Champs - I think you'll find Travis WILL be playing the holding role. We are packed with attacking players now, and if Evans, Smallwood and Bennett are to be dumped, as you'd prefer, with Davenport injured, who else is there? Johnson has spent most of his career in that slightly more advanced role Travis has occupied too.
Perhaps that is why TM is actually considering Whelan (if it's true!)
If so, it's a very short-term measure, surely.
A midfield of Johnson, Whelan and Downing would not be in the first flush of youth, and I'm not sure how they'd go for pace!
Our midfield options, including "wingers", are: Bennett, Chapman, Johnson, Travis, Davenport, Evans, Smallwood, Buckley, Rankin-Costello, Armstrong, Rothwell, Downing, Gladwin.
OK - some more likely than others, but it's getting bloody crowded in there already.
If we assume Dack and Graham are certainties (till Gallagher has settled in), and we add in the back five, we have to pick four in midfield (or as the so-called "wide attackers"). Travis, Armstrong and Rothwell probably top the pecking-order, and I'm taking it that Johnson has been signed to play. You don't like Bennett, but I bet he is one of the first on the team-sheet. And where does Downing fit in? Not much room for anyone else!
TM has talked about REDUCING the squad to 25/26. Well, if we get two keepers, a centre-back and Whelan, I estimate we're up to about 35 (and I'm discounting Rodwell) - if we include Rankin-Costello, Wharton, Magloire, Buckley and Butterworth.
I doubt very much that both Evans AND Smallwood will go, and although I think we can discount Samuel and Gladwin for now, we still have a big surplus. Does that mean all those youngsters, together with Nuttall and Brereton, will be excluded from the first-team squad?
If that is the case, Mowbray will get a lot of stick from a section of the support.
I know you think there has to be lots of cover, but how far does that go before some players are starved of playing-time?