billycopper
Player Valuation: £40m
In his presser yesterday Roberto was asked what the change has been.
His first point was competition for places. We lost 5 players in the summer (Hitzlsperger, Neville, Mucha, Anichebe and Fellaini) and replaced them with 7 (Barry, Lukaku, Deulofeu, McCarthy, Kone, Alcaraz and Joel). We lost 2 in January (Heitinga and Jelavic) and made up the numbers again (Traore and McGeady).
Naismith has started 7 league games and come on a further 17 times this year, which is actually down on 13 (18) last season but he's getting the opportunity to play with freedom in his preferred position rather than filling in out wide. So, infact, he's almost matched last year's goal tally from about half as many starts.
Oviedo has made 8 starts this year compared to just 1 last year and he would have had many more if it wasn't for his injury.
So, more faith has been put into the fringe players to play to their strengths and fight for a starting place rather than to simply deputise for a regular.
His second point was that he wanted to get the right blend between youth and experience. Stones and Barkley are now bone fide first-team players because of this policy and have also helped to increase the competition for places.
Thirdly, he said that he wanted to protect players from burn out. He used the specific example of Kevin Mirallas, who has already played 2 more league games than he did in the whole of last season. Martinez is managing his squad intelligently and using players who are keen to impress eg. Stones, Deulofeu and Naismith while the likes of Mirallas, McGeady and Alcaraz work on their conditioning so that they're ready to step in feeling fully refreshed.
We've been unfortunate with serious injuries to Kone, Gibson and Oviedo as well as layoffs for Jagielka, Pienaar and Traore. Combine that with an uneven start to the season where we dominated matches but couldn't make the breakthrough and our current position could have been even stronger.
His first point was competition for places. We lost 5 players in the summer (Hitzlsperger, Neville, Mucha, Anichebe and Fellaini) and replaced them with 7 (Barry, Lukaku, Deulofeu, McCarthy, Kone, Alcaraz and Joel). We lost 2 in January (Heitinga and Jelavic) and made up the numbers again (Traore and McGeady).
Naismith has started 7 league games and come on a further 17 times this year, which is actually down on 13 (18) last season but he's getting the opportunity to play with freedom in his preferred position rather than filling in out wide. So, infact, he's almost matched last year's goal tally from about half as many starts.
Oviedo has made 8 starts this year compared to just 1 last year and he would have had many more if it wasn't for his injury.
So, more faith has been put into the fringe players to play to their strengths and fight for a starting place rather than to simply deputise for a regular.
His second point was that he wanted to get the right blend between youth and experience. Stones and Barkley are now bone fide first-team players because of this policy and have also helped to increase the competition for places.
Thirdly, he said that he wanted to protect players from burn out. He used the specific example of Kevin Mirallas, who has already played 2 more league games than he did in the whole of last season. Martinez is managing his squad intelligently and using players who are keen to impress eg. Stones, Deulofeu and Naismith while the likes of Mirallas, McGeady and Alcaraz work on their conditioning so that they're ready to step in feeling fully refreshed.
We've been unfortunate with serious injuries to Kone, Gibson and Oviedo as well as layoffs for Jagielka, Pienaar and Traore. Combine that with an uneven start to the season where we dominated matches but couldn't make the breakthrough and our current position could have been even stronger.