Morning folks and welcome to Thursday, as we tick ever-closer towards that game against Palace for the 12.30pm kick off on Saturday lunchtime. I’d asked for a marginal gain of Everton and Palace going to extra time last night and whilst it was unfortunate that it never happened, the fact that Palace put out a strong team in this game and therefore those players will be asked to go again on Saturday will, let’s hope, will be a little more tired ahead of the game this weekend although afterwards I’ve seen comments from Roy suggesting that he understands why the Palace fans booed him for taking off players just after the hour mark. He brought off their two full backs and Eze, which says to me that he wanted to protect those players as he knows that our threat comes from the wing positions and that Eze will be a key counter attacking threat for them this weekend, so having him ready to roll at lunchtime is key.

It’s an interesting one though because I wonder whether playing an hour makes a massive difference or not to their levels? Clearly the data Roy has is more advanced from the analysts at Palace and clearly he knew that he wouldn’t be able to do a solid 90 from those players. It makes you think about the balancing act Arteta has had to do with the Champions League this season, because we’ve seen some of our key players play the full 90 on a Tuesday/Wednesday, then have to do another round of games at the weekend. Roy obviously doesn’t have the depth of squad and therefore he doesn’t have the ability to go hard at a game on a Wednesday before doing the same on a Saturday lunchtime and it does go to show you how important getting that squad rotation and balance right is.

Perhaps that’s the next key learning Arteta will have to take from this season when we get to the end of it; we have seen some of our players play 180 minutes in four days and when you talk about marginal gains then perhaps that is something that we will need to sort out rather promptly if we advance beyond Porto in the Champions League. We play in one competition until then because of our knockout of the FA Cup and therefore I’m looking at the period between now and when we play Porto towards the end of Feb as being quite important to get the team in tip-top shape. But it is also incumbent on the manager to make sure that he gets adequate minutes in to the legs of the players who have perhaps played less minutes this season. Fabio Vieira is returning, Partey is returning, Smith Rowe is returning and eventually Timber will return along with Tomiyasu from the Asia Cup. By mid February he should have – fingers crossed – plenty of options to choose from and what I’m hoping for from this second half of the season is that we see a little more rotation so that those fringe players can make more of an impact than they did in the first half of the season. Chucking ESR for dead minutes at the end of a game is hardly going to give him the chance to regain that form that saw him score from the bench practically every time he came on a couple of years back. That’s what we need to see more of and if we’re going to have any kind of success this season you do feel as though it is the impact of substitutions that could be a difference maker. What would you give now for a couple of Reiss Nelson vs Bournemouth moments, etc? I know we had the Declan Rice last-gasp winner, but he was on the pitch; I’m talking the Nelson’s, or the Bendtner versus the Scum kind of moments. That’s what I’m hopeful for from our subs for the remainder of the season.

But they have to be given more than just ‘dead’ minutes in the last couple of a game. They have to be given the chance to impact and Arteta – who I do think has improved a lot this season – needs to be more bold if he thinks something isn’t working. If it’s 60 minutes and he thinks something isn’t quite right, make the change. Heck, if it’s the first half and you see something hasn’t worked, make the change. As fans we know that he is responsible for preparing his team, changing tactics in game, but another big part of his role is knowing when to roll the dice. My big hope for the second half of the season is that he doesn’t mind doing that a little earlier than perhaps he has before.

There’s not a lot else on at the moment so I might leave it for today, other than the other FA Cup tie that may or may not affect us that happened last night, which was Forest beating Blackpool. It means they play over the weekend before we play them, but as it’s on the Friday night, it gives them a little more recovery time than i’d have liked. Would have been good to see them play Saturday afternoon and then us on Tuesday, but I guess them playing Bristol might have Nuno thinking that they could get something from the game and play a stronger team. All the while our players will have the weekend off so hopefully that is another marginal gain we can take advantage of as we try to get our season back to winning ways.

Right, that’s yer lot from me today – catch you wonderful humans tomorrow.