Rileybobs wrote:Of course they can happen, in any game, but the risk of injury increases substantially if a player is fatigued. I don't know how you can even argue against this point.
What a load of rubbish. It's a squad game and we have players capable of stepping into the side and getting results at this level. Dyche has played a strong side in all of our European games.
So it's the footballers you have the problem with? I guarantee every single member of our squad will want to start tonight. They're not having the luxury of a week off, they're being rotated strategically to give us the best chance of winning as many games as possible this season.
Fatigue? Give me a break. You have swallowed this whole 'finely tuned athlete' thing haven't you. Joints might take a little longer but muscles, under normal stress conditions, repair themselves in 48 hours unless torn or severely damaged. Joints suffer the worst damage from repetitive strain and the range of movement in a footballer is greater and less repetitive than in many other sports.
Rubbish? No it isn't. People are hard pressed financially these days and to try to say, for example, that playing Bardsley and Long (among others) is playing our best team (or close to it as you seem to suggest) is actually the rubbish. Football is not a cheap sport to watch these days and no-one really wants to pay current prices to watch what amounts to the reserves. This squad rotation is bad enough even in a massive squad (Chelsea come to mind) but at a club like ours it's just not acceptable. Not long ago many on here were moaning that our squad is threadbare and not a great deal has happened since to change that a lot. Question for you: if we were playing Man Utd on Sunday and all our players were fit what would you think if Dyche left out Tarks and Mee? Admit it, you'd go nuts and rightly so, so why is it okay to leave them out in Europe? I'll tell you why because you don't value that competition enough. And THAT is the whole problem! I actually tend toward Europe because I think it is not impossible that we could win it, the odds are not good I'll admit but it is far more likely than winning the damn PL. So I would invest the biggest effort in that which is more realistic in terms of success.
Your last paragraph is a bit pointless really because I have never said they don't WANT to play, I'm sure they do, it's the powers behind the team that look at where the money is and decide which is more important. I just think we are a sports club and as such we should be looking to actually win things.
There is an obsession now in football that clubs should be run as a business and I can get with that to a degree, but we have now reached a point where clubs seem to put business first and football second, which begs the question what is the point. Football is, or was, about passion and pride and trying to win things, not about who has the biggest bank balance.
