Our performance in early rounds with weakened sides is not just worrying because of the result it is also of concern because it seems that we cannot slot players into the first team formation/system and expect them to perform. Without checking whether it was last year or the one before that I remember Blackpool beating us with a team that had something like nine changes from the league side we had lost to a week or two before and they played in the same style and got a positive result against us when we put out a team with fewer changes. The team on Wednesday was like (and I don't know if this is true) we had taken the better players from the U23s and asked them to play in the positions of the players we wanted to rest/rotate rather than taking the lad who would play RWB for the U23s and slot him in at RWB. Indeed the formation seemed rather confused but I was "watching on the radio" and unlike the halcyon days of dear old Ali, Mr. Drury does not paint a picture of the proceedings with words. He still has a dreadful habit of seeming more excited when the opposition shoot/score than when we do.
Losing is never a good result, it doesn't mean that you will magically play better in the next more important game in fact it probably means the opposite. Winning is a habit and so is losing. Nor does it mean that your players will not get injured (though obviously they can't get injured in a game they don't play in) but they can still pick up injuries in training or just picking their kit bag out of the boot of the car. It would have been better for Sunday if we had won on Wednesday to say otherwise is trying to excuse the abject performance in front of a fair few paying punters who deserved better. And yes the chances us winning the cup this season are miniscule that's not the point. The point is trying to win every game that you play in whether it is the league, the cup or a game in the ressies.
Nobody is offering you that. This isn't a midnight meeting at the crossroads with the horn'd one. It's a game of football one team wins, one team loses. Nor is it an intellectual exercise or a spreadsheet it is a sporting contest in which there is a considerable element of luck but the most important thing is that it is entertaining. Wednesday night was not entertaining it was shambolic and cannot have advanced our team cohesion or function in any way.
Blah blah blah points. Losing on Wednesday makes losing on Sunday more not less likely.
Give me entertainment and (perhaps one day) glory.
The reason we have a weakened side in the cup is because we're massively light on numbers, our two best forwards are not fit and the third best is injured. The 4th is in Turkey. There wasn't a 5th, until yesterday, but 2 or 3 of them are not good enough anyway. We have two centre mids, which we can't risk losing through injury or suspension and also had a centre back suspended. We can't even risk tiring players or getting slight knocks in key positions as when we have to make subs we drop a level considerably. The exact same thing happened against QPR, once we were forced into subs we lost all momentum.
Had we not played like clowns in the first half we could have been chasing a winner at the end, rather than a draw.
Other years with larger squads we could probably take more risk, but we don't have that luxury now. We will have a better squad by the time the FA Cup comes, so could do similar to what we did last year. I'd rather we didn't mind, unless we're walking the league, which we probably won't be.
We might not play better in the next game (or after any cup game), but we'll certainly be fitter/ have less knocks/ have less injuries/ less suspensions, it's impossible not to. It's a game of extremely fine margins, and there's no point our players being knackered in the final 30 minutes of the game when it matters most. I don't believe in habits, I believe in quality, fitness, strength in depth and player availability.
Injuries in training are far less likely, as the intensity and tackling is dialled down, same applies to friendlies to a lesser degree, which is why they're often awful to watch.
I get the point about paying punters 100%, we shouldn't be fielding a weakened side and charging £18. But I don't mean play better players, I mean just charge less, as in half. We would probably pick up the fan numbers too and might even spur us on a bit better.
You might not offer it, but I think we have a decent chance with our first team, and with what we bring in. If we get key injuries to key players though we're screwed. Equally if our performance after each cup game dips by 10% we're going to get less points.
End of the day I'm agreeing with what Wilder did, and seeing as he's the first decent manager we've had for a long while, then I reckon he knows a lot more than all of us do. He knew the risk, we had some good chances, and we lost, the first 11 have forgotten about that already, 99% of what they care about is Sunday which is against a team who got a lot closer than us to the Premier League.
I'm hoping for entertainment and wins on Sunday and Wednesday, that's worth 10x more beating a league 1 team.