A wet and windy Wednesday night in Stoke it is. Mourinho has already told us this side will be a mix of his first and second sides, and with any like he might be able to get away with it. Joe Rodon is cup-tied, otherwise I’d have not selected Sanchez. Dele Alli has to start, and he won’t get a better opportunity to show he can still play a bit.
Carlos Vinicius needs to show us he’s worth retaining. Nothing personal, but like Gedson Fernandes, neither lad can even make the bench for Premier League matches, which is a tad depressing. Sonny and Kane may well have failed to score against Leicester City in part. at least because of fatigue. It would be poor form to see them deployed tonight.
That midfield won
t scare anybody. It screams the opposite of creativity. Winks has what, a total of one assist the last four seasons? Throw Sissoko, Lucas and Dele in to the mix and its hard to see who`s gonna create chances. Hope they can prove me wrong thoughI am struggling to think he will sit back in this one, they have conceded plenty of goals and have a keeper problem, our so called first team haven’t done too well lately, so who Mourinho goes with is anyone’s guess.
A very challenging team selection for this game H. Jose is going to have to strike the right balance between key senior players and ‘reserves.’ This game, with no extra time, summoning up some form of the classic footballing cliche “but can they do it at Stoke on a cold/wet/wintry/Wednesday night!” has ‘banana skin’ writ large all over it!
My team to ‘sock it to … erm … scrape through on penalties!’ … Lloris; Davies, Dier, Sanchez, Doherty; Hojbjerg, Sissoko, Ndombele; Dele, Kane, Bale. I don’t think this is the team Jose will pick by the way, at least up front. I think he will pick a front 3 of Lucas, Kane and Bergwijn.