ToffeeCup

Posts: 3,044

March 2012
Some joy, as pre ordered in hope, from the derby day squad rotation.

He even brought back Gibson and gave Fellaini a rest as we beat Swansea away which is no mean feat going by the stats this season.

Now, anyone can see that Pienaar is cup tied. But Drenthe, who can legislate for that?

And Distan on the other hand just seems to play on and on and on.

Coleman didn't make it and Rodwell is out. Neville and other players aren't getting too old to compete at this level but asking them to maintain their top level during such a run is tough at their age.

So come match day, while people are predicting their line ups... that predictable, defensive Davey is going to pick.

Noone on here gets it right. Gueye comes in to offer the sort of direct threat we've come to expect from Pienaar, Drenthe and Coleman. And didn't Gueye do well?

Well... maybe he did well because he had the experience and quality of Fellaini, Osman and Gibson around him. In a settled team. Maybe those four players were able to play well because they had Cahill and Jelavic as our first choices in front of them and our prefered, through form of late, centre half pairing of Heitinga and Distan behind them, Captain Phil at right back and Baines where he just always, always is.

You can't always predict what is going to happen but when faced with so many games you can understand that injuries might well start to creep in.

And after the run of games we've just had... and the games we have coming up... the talk is not of players recently absent, and how long they'll be out for... its of players coming back.

We could have been further up the league mounting a pretty insurmountable charge for a Europa Cup birth and not longer in this competition, as ref wise, it wouldn't have taken much more for us to have lost at Goodison... let alone if Gueye had been joined by one or two others from the bench. Or if Jelavic had struggled to play so many minutes after having that awkward injury...

And now, on the way to Wembley (shockingly, for a semi final but still) one game away from what looks very much like a Europa Cup place just for turning up. And who knows what else from there...

He may not have been 100% right... but he was within his rights and sod you who thought he was wrong.