Second XIs of the team's below us

[Skills]

What are they? Ours is probably now :

Romero/Henderson
Dalot/Laird --- Bailly/Tuanzabe --- Smalling/Jones--- Williams

---- Fred ---- McTominay

Greenwood/RW ----- VDB --- James

-------------- Ighalo

For a back up XI that looks pretty stacked to me - it's certainly quite an expensive ensemble of players. Obviously nobody actually plays a full 2nd XI, the main first team players will be littered across it during the rotation and vice versa.

What do Spurs, Arsenal, Wolves and Leicester have in the name of "depth" that is now going to risk us losing out on the top 4?

 

[rcoobc]

Seeing Smalling/Jones still written in 2020 is pretty funny.

 

[Skills]

Seeing Smalling/Jones still written in 2020 is pretty funny.

Pretty sure that was Alex Ferguson's intention when he bought them as teenagers

Interestingly enough, who is Leicester or Wolves 4th/5th choice CB who's better than either of them? As far as I remember, even their first choice CB (Evans) wasn't good enough to outlast either of them.

 

[Spaghetti]

Williams, James and Ighalo are most in need of an upgrade imo.

 

[arnie_ni]

You need to be looking at the teams ahead of us, not below us

 

[Skills]

You need to be looking at the teams ahead of us, not below us

There's only 2 - that's Man City and Liverpool. So what do Liverpool have in their back up XI?

 

[Ødegaard]

Ours is more like:

Romero
TFM - Bailly - Jones - Williams
Fred
McTominay - Lingard
Mata - Ighalo - James​

Smalling refuses to be backup so should not be counted. Ole trusts TFM before Dalot/Laird, unless i missed an injury on Laird. You can dismiss Mata for Lingard when VdB comes.

Spoiler: Chelsea

Caballero
Azpilicueta - Zouma - Tomori - Alonso
Jorginho - Gilmour
Mount - Barkley - CHO
Abraham​

Spoiler: City

Carson
Cancelo - Otamendi - Stones - Zinchenko
Gundogan - Fernandinho - ?
Mahrez - Jesus - Torres​

Spoiler: Liverpool

Adrian
Williams - Sepp VdB - Gomez - Tsimikas
Keita - Ox - Milner
Shaqiri - Origi - Wilson​

City clearly has a few top class rotation alternatives, being able to put on that many good players is absurd.
Chelsea have good backup in every position in my opinion.
Liverpool is in a position where the only quality players in their second XI is Gomez, Shaq & Keita, but their system works so well that even with a few injuries they somehow make it work.
We've got numbers, but it's mostly just bloat, injury-plagued or unproven youth outside of our midfield. Our midfield with VdB is actually quite good.

 

[OleBoiii]

Smalling is probably gonna be sold and Greenwood is in the starting XI.

The only good backup for our entire defense(GK not included) is Williams. An injury to Maguire or Lindelöf would be catastrophic. That's why we should probably sign another CB and maybe push Lindelöf to the bench.

Fred is not really a DM, and I don't like a midfield two of him and Pogba. Ideally we need to sign a young DM who will rotate with Matic and gradually become our starter.

Signing a RW is a no-brainer.

 

[arnie_ni]

There's only 2 - that's Man City and Liverpool. So what do Liverpool have in their back up XI?

Liverpool dont seem to have the same injury and burnout problem as we do and citys blows us out of the water.

The amount of minutes players like williams, James, Andreas and jesse played last year for the quality they deliver was shocking.

 

[Dominos]

Fred is not really a DM, and I don't like a midfield two of him and Pogba. Ideally we need to sign a young DM who will rotate with Matic and gradually become our starter.

We played pretty well against Sevilla with this pairing.

If we wanted a Matic replacement this summer we shouldn't have given him a new contract, there's no room for a new signing alongside Matic, Fred and Mctominay.

 

[Sandikan]

Pretty sure that was Alex Ferguson's intention when he bought them as teenagers

Interestingly enough, who is Leicester or Wolves 4th/5th choice CB who's better than either of them? As far as I remember, even their first choice CB (Evans) wasn't good enough to outlast either of them.

Think Smalling was 20, but similar point.

After we signed him, I remember watching a few Fulham games and he actually made glaring errors in each of them.

Still, he was decent for us, just not the level we'd been spoilt by.