I was thinking about our midfield options and started to wonder, do we currently have too many? 

At the moment our midfielders are Jorginho, Kante, Barkley, Fabregas, Loftus-Cheek, Kovacic, Drinkwater, Bakayoko. 

It is widely accepted that Bakayoko is going to be leaving, most likely on loan but that still leaves us with seven players for three starting places. 

So how will it work? Does each of the three midfield roles have a starter and reserve? For arguments sake

Deep lying play maker:

Jorginho, Fabregas

Right sided midfield:

Kante, Kovacic, Drinkwater

Left sided midfield:

Barkely, Loftus-Cheek

So regardless of who is else is fit, if a first choice player is unavailable for a game does a particular player step in? So Loftus-Cheek won't play right side of midfield only ever on the left?

I'm curious what everyone else thinks, I think we've got too many players at the moment even minus Bakayoko and I'm not sure how we give them all playing time. None of them are going to want to sit out the majority of matches because they're all quite seasoned players. 

Against Huddersfield Sarri only named one central midfielder on the bench, Loftus-Cheek. If that's what he does for most games going forward then three players are going to miss out every game. 

Do you think we could see another player leave by the end of the month, if so who? Stories today suggest RLC will reject the chance to join Schalke on loan for the season and fight for a place in the team. Not sure I can see Drinkwater being in much demand in Europe. Barkley looks to be favoured by Sarri and I'm not sure we would want to let Fabregas go either.  

Drinkwater should have left over summer. Sadly it never happened and now we're stuck with him. I imagine him and Cesc will get the least minutes this season, with Jorginho playing every game that he's fit and DD just not being good enough. 

Agreed that Drinkwater is probably going to get the least amount of minutes out of all of them. 

Cesc is such a good passer of the ball, I think he could be a great option to have coming off of the bench, probably likely to impact a game more than RLC would coming on late. 

I can't imagine that Kante or Jorginho would be subbed off during a match very often so it's really only that attacking midfield role that's going to see some rotation. 

But RLC, Barkley and Kovacic all fighting for minutes seems too many players for me, one of those three is surely going to miss out. You'd assume Kovacic is going to get a healthy amount of minutes, otherwise why bring him in on loan? So our of Barkley and RLC one isn't going to get picked very often. 

Kante - Jorginho - Kovacic will start every league game if fit.

Barkley and Cesc will get chances in Europa League and Drinkwater should leave. Paying £35 million for him still gives me nightmares.

Maybe Vitesse would like Drinkwater

Drinkwater should probably have gone, but I suspect we probably priced him out of a move since we massively overpaid for him last summer. I can't see him playing more than 3 or 4 cup games, before we try and move him on again in January.

Fabregas is in the last year of a big contract, so he was near impossible to move on, and I think this will be his season with us. He's good to bring on when your chasing a goal though, so I think he will be on the bench for most games.

RLC and Barkley will both be behind kovacic for that left midfield spot I think. Whichever one impresses the least, will find themselves out of the match day squad, and I can imagine one of them will leave permantly by this time next year.

Kovacic, Kante, and Jorginho will start the majority of games I think. I think a few posters will be pleasantly suprised with Kovacic, he's a £60m midfielder in today's market, and I cant see him not playing regularly here. 

There still may be time for drinkwater to go out on loan, I think the club has helped the choice a bit by sending bako out on loan and a few others. 

Fabregas will get 10-15 minutes every so often and will feature mainly in early stages of europa and carabao cup

But I also think having options in midfield especially when we have europa Thursday and then a league game the weekend it will work for rotation if we progress into the the knock outs 

The fact we have Europa means I think we're ok for mids.  At best maybe we have one too many, but I'm happy we have a bit of depth in that department.  Drinkwater will be the one that sees the least amount of time, but if he can come on to give a first teamer a rest in a Europa League match then that's fine by me.

I think the first choice is pretty much kovacic jorginho and kante. Kovacic covers for when jorginho isn't available /fit which gives Loftus Cheek and barkley plenty of minutes. The only concern I have is that there isn't a natural replacement for kante if he gets injured 

1 hour ago, zolawannabe25 said:

I think the first choice is pretty much kovacic jorginho and kante. Kovacic covers for when jorginho isn't available /fit which gives Loftus Cheek and barkley plenty of minutes. The only concern I have is that there isn't a natural replacement for kante if he gets injured 

Kovacic would also work as back up to Kante but then it's most probably drinkwater

5 hours ago, big blue said:

Drinkwater? should probably have gone, but I suspect we probably priced him out of a move since we massively overpaid for him last summer. I can't see him playing more than 3 or 4 cup ga?mes, before we try and move him on again in January.?

Agreed, I can only see him playing in the League cup/FA Cup and I wouldn’t be surprised if he left in Jan. I expect Jorginho, Kante & Kovacic to be our main midfield, Barkley & RLC will compete for minutes and are nice options to have off the bench. Fabregas provides nice cover for Jorginho and is the best back up option to play the Jorginho role, if Jorginho becomes fatigued, injured or suspended. I’m hearing rumours that Sarri wants to keep Piazon as well, if so I think he’d more than likely provide cover on the left wing. 

I thought I read somewhere about RLC playing as RW (IDK if he has the finishing capabilities to play as a winger however) so maybe that is where the depth thins out a bit. I agree with the majority that DD should not be in this side. But its nice to have the depth in case the worst happens, but ugh I'd rather him not be here. 

We have got a lot of CM which is a good and a bad thing. Realistically in the PL games, Kante and Jorginho are guaranteed starters. The other CM slot has got 5 CM competing for it. Drinkwater should hope for a loan move elsewhere because he will be hugely down the pecking order. I hope he is here but still would not rule out RLC going out on loan by the end of the transfer window. Things change and if it looks like his game time will be limited, he may go out on loan. Similar to what happened with Lukaku when we loaned him out, although he initially said he was going to stay. RLC will get games in Europa League and cup games etc but it is the league where he will want to play and test himself against the best.

There's rumour about RLC loan move to Schalke and another about wanting to sell Drinkwater.

Although we have Barkley and Cesc if RLC goes I would prefer Drinkwater to stay.

I've noticed people talk about Europa League in the same breath as domestic cups - a nice consolation trophy if you can't get the big ones (PL & CL), but not too precious and thus an opportunity to give some kids and/or fringe players some games.

Given how tight it will be getting into Top 4 (and a lot of people are predicting that we won't) - I would treat EL as a way to get into CL next year. And would treat it really f***ing seriously. It's so much more than a domestic cup.

17 minutes ago, Ilya said:

I've noticed people talk about Europa League in the same breath as domestic cups - a nice consolation trophy if you can't get the big ones (PL & CL), but not too precious and thus an opportunity to give some kids and/or fringe players some games.

Given how tight it will be getting into Top 4 (and a lot of people are predicting that we won't) - I would treat EL as a way to get into CL next year. And would treat it really f***ing seriously. It's so much more than a domestic cup.

Yes it will be interesting to see how Sarri treats the cup matches and to see if he prioritises any in particular.

22 hours ago, Ilya said:

I've noticed people talk about Europa League in the same breath as domestic cups - a nice consolation trophy if you can't get the big ones (PL & CL), but not too precious and thus an opportunity to give some kids and/or fringe players some games.

Given how tight it will be getting into Top 4 (and a lot of people are predicting that we won't) - I would treat EL as a way to get into CL next year. And would treat it really f***ing seriously. It's so much more than a domestic cup.

Chances are whoever we get drawn against in the early rounds will be a level below us. 

We should be able to field second choice and youth players to progress fairly comfortably allowing us to rest and rotate players giving us a chance to make a decent push in the league. 

If we manage to get to the quarter finals of the Europa League I’d hope we’d start playing near enough a full strength team because at that point you’ve got to try and win it. 

For me sell drinkwater and we will need the other 6 for the 4 competitions we are in and when injuries occur

On 15/08/2018 at 10:25, Ilya said:

I've noticed people talk about Europa League in the same breath as domestic cups - a nice consolation trophy if you can't get the big ones (PL & CL), but not too precious and thus an opportunity to give some kids and/or fringe players some games.

Given how tight it will be getting into Top 4 (and a lot of people are predicting that we won't) - I would treat EL as a way to get into CL next year. And would treat it really f***ing seriously. It's so much more than a domestic cup.

Completely agree, win the EL and get into the CL. Obviously we want to finish top 4, but EL should be taken very seriously. Nice thing, group stage should have a home game that we should be able to play more depth, but that doesn't mean we should play out U-23 squad.

Get rid of Baka and stinkwater, then we're good for midfield options with Jorginho, Kante, Kovacic, Barkley, RLC and Cesc

1 hour ago, JJP said:

Get rid of Baka and stinkwater, then we're good for midfield options with Jorginho, Kante, Kovacic, Barkley, RLC and Cesc

Idiot alert.

Could be a typo,  S & D next to each other.

 

 

1 minute ago, mbh said:

Could be a typo,  S & D next to each other.

 

 

Yeah right. Same for the t instead of r, of course.

Could be, will we ever know?

 

8 minutes ago, mbh said:

Could be a typo,  S & D next to each other.

Would you like to buy some magic beans?

Edited August 17, 20187 yr by Kentonio