Oh well, can’t win them all.
I said going into the game that this was going to be a lot tougher than it was against Stoke, so for us to come out with a draw is a pretty reasonable result.
However, there was one part of the team selection that left me rather baffled.
With Michael Dawson sustaining an injury in our win at Stoke City last Friday, there was always going to be a lot of speculation about who was going to fill that slot in the line-up alongside Joe Worrall. The two of them have formed an excellent partnership together, but given Dawson’s age, it was never going to last forever.
I said a couple of weeks of ago that I thought it was time for the likes of Chema to be given a run out in the first team. Given that we’ve only got him on a two-year deal, it seems weird that we are somewhat limiting his usage when we’ve only got him on such a short period of time. And given that he came on in place of Dawson when he got injured on Friday, logic would dictate that he’d be the natural replacement when it came to the starting line-up against Blackburn. So when Sabri Lamouchi picked Tobias Figueiredo instead of him, it certainly seemed like a strange choice.
All of this leaves me wondering, as it did a few months ago, just when are we going to see him make an impact on the first team?
I can’t believe that someone we brought in on deadline day, at the age of 27 (so not exactly over the hill when it comes to his career) would just be happy to sit on the bench all season, wait for an injury and then not even get a chance when that injury does happen. Are we going to have to wait for a flood of injuries to come our way before we start seeing him making an impact? Or are we going to have to wait until next season?
So many questions, but there’s one simple answer to all of them, and that’s give him a chance to show us what he can do.
What about you? Do you think that Lamouchi was right to go with Figueiredo? Or would you rather he went with Chema? Or indeed someone else?
