part time pete wrote:Cleveland_Stag wrote:DoomMerchant wrote:I reckon the people who see these players work and perform all day, every day will always be a better judge than every single individual on Stagsnet. Odd as that may seem.
Saying this to people when they give their opinions is a bit narrow minded. There’d be very little football discourse if everyone always abided by the opinions and choices made by football managers.
Like all managers, Clough has and will continue to make mistakes and some of us might call out the mistake before it plays out! Clough will also get things right despite some of us initially disagreeing with the choice he’s made. He lost us the playoff final when he picked a midfield of O’Toole, Longstaff, Quinn and Murphy for the playoff final and thought they were a suitable midfield for a playoff final at Wembley despite none of them having any legs. I’m sure a lot of the posters on here would have strongly disagreed with that team selection. But maybe we shouldn’t be allowed to display our disagreement with choices like that one and others because Clough’s a football manager and therefore knows better than us mere mortals!
Can’t just try to shutdown debate with “Clough is smarter than you and your opposing opinion”.
(I don’t think Flinders is better than Pym, for what it’s worth)
I think the issue with the play off midfield selection is do we know the fitness of your alternative selection. I know I don’t and suggest you don’t either.
Maris started the Salford game and the FGR game going into the playoffs and then started semi final first leg vs Northampton. There wasn’t anything said to suggest that he was injured. Lapslie started the Salford game, was on the bench for the FGR game, and was on the bench for both playoff semi final games, coming on in the 2nd leg. There wasn’t anything said to suggest that Lapslie was injured either. In fact, Quinn was the midfielder carrying a knock despite starting the final - Clough alluded to him struggling with the same knock for weeks after the semi final 1st leg.
So yeah, nothing was said to say that Maris and Lapslie didn’t start the final because of knocks and they’d both played a decent amount in the prior few games. Picking O’Toole, Murphy and Longstaff (and Quinn carrying a knock) when none of them can run over Lapslie and Maris was practically suicide, especially factoring in that Vale were an athletic side and it’s a very big pitch at Wembley, thus mobility is important. Clough just got his team selection horribly wrong.
