QuincyAbeyie yep, City have a deeper squad and can pretty much cover any injury crisis so KDB's example is illustrative of the strategy that another top manager uses when one of his key players gets injured rather than the specifics of tactics. We are not as well equipped as City to deal with a loss of key personnel.

The original claim was that the way to address Odegaard's injury would be to have an Odegaard-lite on the bench and play more or less the same way and hope that works. That's not how top club's approach that challenge, you need to redesign your system to rebalance away from your weakness and towards your strengths.

    Ødegaard being out for us would be like both Rodri and De Bruyne being out would be for City. He's both our metronome and half our cutting edge at this moment.

    Sicario2 - Tier 1 This loan is not to make him a better fit for the PL - feels like this is more to give him minutes so that someone (perhaps Porto themselves) will buy him next summer.

      Don Pacifico Partey can't cover what Ode does though, can he?

      TBH Partey would likely be better than Vieira if we were that stuck.

      The reality is in the event of an Odegaard injury Havertz or Trossard were probably still going to be ahead of Vieira. And I'd rather see Nwaneri fill in if we've a crisis than Vieira too.

        Turning into quite the protracted saga

        Also so strange if accurate cover for a player you refused to ever pick what are we covering a place sitting on the bench.

          awooga83 imagine it's a reaction to Vieira going on loan given he was playing RW in pre-season.

            If we can’t get an attacker I’m resigned in keeping Eddie out of necessity

            goon probably wages. They say deal can’t be reached. Solanke’s wages are around £50k. Plus these are clubs that live with the threat of relegation. So he needs to be flexible if he goes there

              If we fail to offload Eddie now after he reached terms with Marseille then Edu has conclusively fucked it. Simply no good.

              And if we go into this season treating Eddie as a rotational forward option we've fucked it even more.