Options for Thursday

Our biggest match in years and we're in an injury crisis. Wayne Bridge and Vincent Kompany limped out of the Arsenal game, which Stephen Ireland didn't even make. Combined with the ineligibles - Valeri Bozhinov and Nigel de Jong, and the long term absentees Michael Johnson and Martin Petrov we're not going to be at our strongest.

Ten of the team pick themselves. Shay Given will surely continue in goal, as will Micah Richards, Richard Dunne and Nedum Onuoha in defence. Although Pablo Zabaleta has twice replaced Bridge recently, the absence of de Jong, Kompany and Ireland from the midfield will surely require his presence there. And so it will be a recall for Javi Garrido, unless Hughes takes a huge gamble and gives a debut to 19 year old Ryan McGivern.

Skipping over the midfield briefly, the front three should all be fit. Robinho, Bellamy and Wright-Phillips have produced some of our best football of the season in European games - København at home and away, and Aalborg at home.

But in midfield we've got problems. Zabaleta is sure to start, as is Elano. But who else? Without Kompany, Ireland and de Jong we are short of options. I imagine the most obvious one is to give Gelson Fernandes his first start since Forest in the FA Cup:


If that prospect is just too worrying, then how about this: one last hurrah for Dietmar Hamann. He's back in training, he played Reserves last night and could just be the calming influence we need in the midfield.


If no nous Gelson and no pace Didi are just too worrying then there is one more option: Wright-Phillips in midfield. We did it for much of the autumn, allowing us to accomodate Darius Vassell on the right wing. I'd rather Vassell didn't play on Thursday, but how about Daniel Sturridge? Last time we played in Germany we had Sturridge on the left and he did quite well.


One final option would be Martin Petrov in place of Danny Sturridge, but I'm not sure he's match fit. I think that the Fernandes option is the least bad one, but none of them are great.

Whom to drop?

Mark Hughes has a big decision to make. For all our appearance of a settled side in recent months, various injuries, suspensions and regulations have combined to save the manager from dropping a front line player. We are yet to have a match when all of these players have been available: Bridge, Dunne, Onuoha, Richards, Zabaleta, de Jong, Kompany, Ireland, Robinho and SWP. I've not included Given or the strikers, because their positions are self-contained - there's only slot in the team, they can't play anywhere else in our current system, and no-one else can play there.

I know this sounds unlikely but it's true. To move backwards in time since :

Sunderland - Bridge and Ireland injured.
AaB (a) - de Jong ineligible.
Chelsea - Kompany and de Jong injured.
AaB (h) - de Jong ineligible, Kompany injured.
Aston Villa - Richards, Robinho injured.
West Ham - SWP suspended.
København (h) - de Jong ineligible.
Liverpool - SWP suspended.
København (a) - de Jong ineligible.
Portsmouth - Richards injured, SWP suspended, Dunne suspended.
Boro - Dunne suspended.
Stoke - Dunne suspended.
Newcastle - Dunne suspended.

So as you can see, one key absentee in each of the last thirteen games has allowed Hughes to rotate the players (principally by moving Zabaleta and Kompany between midfield and defence as appropriate) without dropping a big name. But for the Arsenal game on Saturday, we may well be in the position of having all of those ten players available. And providing that we stick with Bellamy or Bozhinov alone up front, we can only pick nine of them. So who will it be? Here are the options. (I've used Bellamy rather than Bozhinov up front, but naturally you could switch Boji in and everything else would still hold):

1) To drop Richards


Maybe harsh on Richards, who has played well. But Zabaleta is probably a better right back than he is. And this allows us play three specialist central midfielders.

2) To drop Kompany


He's had a fantastic first season in England, but has noticeably struggled for form and fitness recently. Zabaleta, Ireland and de Jong are all in better nick at the moment. But leaving him out gives us a midfield lacking height though - it's the middle three from the Fratton Park defeat.

3) To drop Onuoha


This is probably quite unlikely. Onuoha is having his best ever sequence of games at the moment, at centre back alongside Dunne. The only reason to do this would be if Hughes fancied Kompany ahead of Onuoha at centre back, which is questionable on current form.

4) To drop Zabaleta


Moving Zabaleta into midfield was done, amongst other reasons, to help get the best out of Richards. And it may be that Richards has done so well that he can't be dropped. And if Kompany and de Jong are preferred to Zabba in central midfield, he may well find himself on the bench.

5) To drop de Jong


This is the UEFA Cup team. But it would be stupid to miss the chance to rest some of our UEFA Cup-eligible players in the league when we have an £18million Dutch international on the bench.

6) To drop Robinho


Heavily rumoured in the press, but generally in conjunction with 'Petrov to return' stories. But how about doing it without Martin Petrov? It's the team from Anfield but with SWP in for Robinho. Could be an option at the Emirates?

As you can tell, none of these options are much better than the others. They all involve leaving out a player who deserves to play, while maintaining a similar quality and balance to the side. It's for this reason that I don't think Hughes will reach any long term decision to this question. There will be games when certain options are better than others, players who will need a rest, and all that. It's called rotation: Sir Alex Ferguson does it quite a lot, and he seems to know what he's doing. For the Emirates on Saturday, I suppose it depends on the fitness of SWP, Kompany and Robinho - all away on international duty. But should every one come back 100% fit, I imagine I'd go for option 2, and give Vincent Kompany a rest. He's looked tired for some time, and we really need him fresh for his return to the HSH Nordbank Arena next Thursday. And Arsenal are not a side against which a big physical presence in midfield is a must to compete. But for Fulham the following Sunday? Who knows.

Injury worries

The bad news: (from mcfc.co.uk)

The Manager said, "We're hoping that the concerns we had last night will allay somewhat. Vincent was struggling somewhat towards the end of the game and we had to take him off.

"Wayne Bridge had to come off with a tight hamstring, and we are hopeful that will not be too serious because we missed him when he went out of the game.

"Stevie Ireland has a really bad ankle after one of their players fell on top of him. He went over on it and we will have to see how he is. They are all key players for us and we would like them to be available this weekend but it's a short turnover time so we could be missing a few."

And the good:

"We will check on Craig as well, he was back here and training well while we were in Denmark. He has had a little bit of discomfort, so we want to be careful but he may well be an option.

"Valeri Bojinov had 75 minutes in the reserves and came through that well, so he is an option at the weekend. Nigel de Jong had a virus and missed a couple of days, but he should be OK," Mark concludes."

So even in the worst case scenario - Bridge, Kompany, Ireland and Bellamy not making it we still have quite a good team we could put out:

There is an obvious weakness at left back, but that aside it should still be enough to beat a very poor Sunderland side. It's possible that Bozhinov isn't quite up to starting, in which case we'd be back to the Caicedo/Evans dilemma again. There can be no doubting Evans' work rate but I still think Caicedo is closer to being an effective Premier League centre forward. And that was the worst case scenario. Bellamy, Ireland et al could conceivably play. And given that we're going into an international break we don't need to be as cautious about bringing people back as we would otherwise be.

Team versus Villa

The injuries to Bellamy and Robinho rather restrict our attacking options. We do, though, have Shaun Wright-Phillips back from suspension. Presumably he'll play on the right wing. Ireland could fill in on the other side - as he did for the first fifteen minutes (albeit on the left) on Sunday. That just leaves us with a centre forward. Of course I'd love to see this:


But I recognise that it's pretty impractical. More likely is that we'll start with another Eriksson-purchased forward with an even worse goals/transfer fee ratio.


One other potential problem is Micah Richards' hamstring injury. Should he not pass his fitness test then presumably Zabaleta will drop into full back and Elano will come into midfield:


Ideally we'd be able to rest Ireland, Zabaleta and Kompany - they all looked exhausted on Sunday. Ideally Felipe Caicedo wouldn't start important Premier League games. But, as Donald Rumsfeld said, 'you go to war with the army you have, not the army you might wish or want to have at a later time.'