There were literally 3 players starting that game for either side who had been injured long term. Many players got injured after the break, who had not been injured before. Many players got injured before the break too.
Pogba wasn’t started because Ole felt it would be unkind to players who had played in his absence. The reasoning has some nobility to it, but the rationale is open for question if it doesn’t get the job done. Any such plan to take it slow was abandoned after 20 minutes back. That’s because it would obviously have been a silly thing to continue with by that stage.
Before the game, many posters advocated Pogba ‘earning his place’. I can bring up the comments. The idea was that he comes off the bench for a few games then starts in the Cup, and we ‘see if he’s up to it.’ This is because they had grown quite fond of the players who had been playing. After 20 mins vs Spurs, none of them were advocating that we continued this easing process, or that Pogba doesn’t start until the cup etc. The idea was clearly not the right one from the beginning, and in retrospect - a mistake. Pogba should have been playing. Only if you had become so won over by the form of the others that you had believed it was a good enough standard, or you had bought into some sort of ‘we have to see if Pogba ‘wants to play’ nonsense’ would you advocate for him, in the most important stage of the season, to be starting on the bench until he shows he is ‘good enough to get into this team’. Those ideas have clearly been proved silly. We’ve watched as it happened. So why is it beyond anyone to say it perhaps wasn’t the best plan in the first place? It was a plan based upon misjudgements of Pogba’s attitude, and Fred and McTominay’s quality. He had been injured for months, I get it. But he’d been back in training for 4 months too. If he can’t play 90, don’t let him play 90. And nobody had played football in 3 months. Would he have to start on the bench on the first day of a new season too? Only for it to be abandoned from the very next game?
I know Rashford and Pogba had ‘different injuries’. Rashford had a broken back for heavens sake! He had also returned to training much later than Pogba. Or must we compare only broken foot with broken foot? Sissoko and Kane also both started. In hindsight, you still feel that it was right not to play Pogba. If we miss out by a point, it is very valid to question whether the team we player in every game since, starting from just 4 days later, should have played vs Spurs too. We never know the outcome, of course, but the question is valid and obvious I think.
And this is before we even get in to Greenwood and Matić. It’s one thing to say us as fans can defend the selection. Us fans are often idiots, and have no real insight. Many wanted Pogba on the bench because they were in their feelings. They thought many things about him, and now we ‘already have a good midfield, HE is the one that needs to prove he is of the level’. Ole, on the other hand, doesn’t have the fan excuse. He is with Pogba and the rest daily. He should have observed that Pogba’s attitude was right to play, and that he is clearly good enough to play ahead of the others. He trains with them. It’s not as if I can’t see his logic, I’m saying that in hindsight it is open to question. Just like I could see Poch’s logic in starting Kane vs Liverpool in the CL Final, but given the result and performance, it is open to question as to whether he should have started Moura. That is football. When you make a call that could have gone the other way, it comes down to the outcome. It was a surprise to many when news articles started appearing a few days before that Pogba would start on the bench. They wrote articles on it because the expectation was that Pogba would play if fit. He didn’t, but came off the bench to rescue a point. Yet I’m not entitled, at all, to ask whether he should have started?
