GlastonSpur
Also disliked on an Aston Villa forum
- Joined
- Feb 4, 2007
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It wasn't just about Villa as the next Prem game. The more first XI players you play in any given EL game, the more chance for one (or several) of them to get injured, and the less rested they become generally.Yep, it was Aston Villa, one of the worst prem teams of all time. Literally a walking three points for whoever plays them.
If you look our the several Prem results after the first of the two Dortmund games, up until the point where our home draw against WBA last Monday made winning the title a very long shot, they read:
* Away win at Villa
* Home win against Bournemouth
* Away draw at Anfield
* Home win against United.
* Away win against Stoke
That's 4 wins and a draw. The draw was at a ground (Anfield) where it's very difficult to go and win, and the away win was at a ground (Stoke) where few away teams manage to win.
That's a very good sequence of result by any standards, a sequence that kept us in the title race. And it's easy to say that games against Villa and Bournemouth were 'gimmes', but the reality is that slip-ups are can easily happen unless a team is 100% on its game ... as our home draw against WBA showed.
So I stand by my view that Pochettino was right to prioritise the Prem over the EL.