We could be taking an awful risk here.
Despite having quite a large squad at his disposal, Forest boss Sabri Lamouchi believes that the players he has are enough to see him through the congested Championship season. Speaking in his press conference yesterday, Lamouchi was quick to point out that the amount of games they’re playing in the space of a week is a challenge, however he believes that his players are up to it:
“We have three games in one week; we played on Friday at Stoke, we play tomorrow against Blackburn and Saturday against Brentford. It is a tough rhythm but the players are ready mentally and physically, so we can’t complain. We are young, very determined and they are exciting games to play.”
However, I think Lamouchi could be putting a little bit too much faith in his players when it comes to managing the workload. When he first took over, he talked about the Championship being the ‘marathon league’, and we are seeing how the injuries are starting to rack up amongst the team. It’s something that I touched on recently when talking about Lewis Grabban, but you can extrapolate the same concerns out across the whole squad.
I think we are one injury away to a key player, like Grabban as our top goalscorer, or Albert Adomah who is proving his usefulness both with goals and assists so far from this fantastic run we are on being brought to a screeching halt.
I think that we are slightly lucky this week in how the fixtures are playing out this week. Once we get through this smorgasbord of fixtures, we have the international break on the horizon, which will give players a great opportunity to rest and recharge their batteries. However, this won’t be the last time we have to deal with these sort of quick-fire fixtures this season, and unless we manage to get the balance right in terms of personnel, we could find ourselves in a tricky situation.
What about you? Do you think that Lamouchi needs to be careful with how he manages his squad? Do you think that an extra couple of bodies and use of ‘fringe players’ might be the way to go?
