On the face of it , We’re stacked with midfielders. Gini got replaced essentially by Harvey , and then more minutes to Jones should be fine.
Just that the injuries piling on this early into the season is worrying.
Fabinho , Thiago , Jones , Elliot , Henderson , Oxlade , Keita , Minamino , Milner. That’s 9 first team midfielders and in theory should be sufficient depth. Not counting the injuries.
Issue is when players who are not injured regularly go down, Elliott isn’t from what I gather injury prone or injured regularly.
The CM is overstocked but that’s the issue many of them are prone, however what happens if they all stay fit, you get a similar situation to the CB currently where Gomez is hardly playing and Konate has been involved twice.
Let’s face it once I saw what Elliott could do in those first two I wasn’t bothered if we didn’t sign anyone as I thought you can now fit him into the equation, one I hadn’t really thought about. Liverpool were really looking at a AM/FW and so the options are scarce.
While Thiago is known, Fabinho was probably more out do to how much he played last season. It wasn’t really helped by the injuries to TAA and Milner coming in there. TAA is another who hasn’t missed a lot bar that 4-6 week spell last year.
The fact is we still have 4 CM and we’ve got 4 on the sideline even if you have one for every position you are still over loaded.
To me we still have a really good CM three and Jones will benefit from playing on Wednesday. It’s when you have to put square pegs in round holes, good thing is we have 3 from 3 in the CL and so can probably risk a draw this week.
Has he not impressed you when he has played?
He is much better with possession than most premier league players.
One or two defensive errors aside he has been excellent, and most players make occasional mistakes.
Not being argumentative but genuinely interested in your views on him.
Milner and Henderson are always liable to pick up more injuries due to age etc. For Milly especially.
At a pinch , We can play a 4-2-3-1 with Minamino/Firmino as the AM but that might lead to problems with the forwards as we aren’t stocked there as well. Either way, I think we need one more signing this December.
Not worried in the slightest about midfield situation.
Henderson and Fabinho are the backbone and as long as they don’t miss too many games at the same time we’re good.
For tomorrow I want to see Hendo, Curtis and Ox starting and Keita coming from bench.
It’ll get to be squeaky bum time though for me.
At least Brighton don’t do cunt moves like Pogshit and the Burnley guys… We really could do with a nice easy game before we face the thugs of Simeone again
We have always struggled against these at home.
Gonna be tough but should have enough to see them off.
It’s not Alexander Oxlade-Chamberlain length that’s for sure.
???
Lol just noticed the spelling mistake.
Had a discussion with a friend who is a man utd fan and the damned autocorrect
I assumed you meant Matip but thought it funnier to point it out…
Alexander Mark David Oxlade-Chamberlain!
But I’m pretty sure he meant Joel Andre Job Matip.
Anyone know if this is on Sky or BT? I can’t find it so assume not 
I reckon it will be on sky… Primarily because hotstar (my broadcaster in india) has a contract with sky and not with bt.
Saturday 15:00 games are never televised live in the UK. Dodgy internet stream required.
Bum, thought that was the case. I’m out in the afternoon and hoped to record it and watch when I got home. Will have to be MOTD then.
I really don’t have an issue with streaming through the internet. Hotstar does a good job of that for me.
Am i missing something here ? Why would you want to prerecord when you could just stream it later ?
Because some of us are old and think ‘streaming’ is some kind of watersport.
I might be mistaken but I thought Minamino played in the front three? So it would be 8 midfielders?
Either way, the point is well made that we are stocked in midfield… barring injury. And it’s that last point that people were making in the summer, even with the quantity of midfielders high.
Ox and Naby have had a lot of injury problems. Thiago has had a fair amount of injuries since arriving. Henderson has shown signs of starting to miss more games. So even though we have a lot of midfielders, the issue was always going to be whether enough of them are fit.
I think in the summer we will add at least one more quality midfielder. And in the meantime we should have enough. If push comes to shove, we saw some quality in Tyler Morton (though he needs to grow stronger to make it in the Prem) and I half wonder if someone like Konate could fill in in defensive midfield in a pinch?
Mind you, I think we have enough, and the last two suggestions won’t be needed.
When is the presser? Looking for some team fitness news.