daredevil We dropped points when Lokonga and Jorginho covered for Partey.
We dropped points when Nketiah covered for Jesus.
We dropped points when Holding covered for Saliba
Also,
We won points when Nketiah covered for Jesus, as well as lost points when Jesus was playing.
We won points when Jorginho covered for Partey, as well as lost points when Partey was playing,
We won points when Holding covered for Saliba, and also dropped points when Saliba played himself.
Yes, our first teamers are better than the subs, yes we'll be affected when they are out. But we still went into commanding leads with Saliba out and in the last game with Zin also out. I get @Claudius point that those two help us keep possession as teams go longer against us but we have enough about ourselves to not give up the initiative and instead continue to force the issue.
Had we continued to push up for a third goal against West Ham, rather than sitting back we wouldn't have needed to have been defending constant long balls as the opposition would be penned back and every time they hot it long it would drop to our feet.
Instead we sat back and got penned in and resorted to clearing the ball that would inevitably fall into the hands of West Ham as they were the ones pressing the issue. In this situation Zinchenko and Saliba could help a lot in regaining the impetus, but that we lost it in the first place, that's more to do with the likes of Saka, Xhaka, Partey and Odegaard who instead of really pushing us along, ended up wasting time and cruising about in the middle of the field as if the game was over before half time.
