You're including players there that in our system would play in the deeper positions. It's a choice between Kane/Llorente and Morata/Giroud, and I go with Kane and Llorente every time.
Then it's a choice between Eriksen, Dele, Son, Lamela, Moura, N'Koudou vs Hazard, Willian, Pedro, Barkley, Loftus-Cheek...Moses?
Then it's a choice between Dembele, Winks, Sissoko, Dier, Wanyama vs Kovacic, Fabregas, Kante, Jorginho.
In the attacking midfield positions, Hazard would obviously get into our side but I don't think their group is way ahead of ours or any more deep at all. Is Moses now playing in the attacking positions again? If so, I'm not really fussed on him.
In the deeper positions, it's probably the weakest part of our squad and they beat us there, but when our players are fit and firing we aren't going to get rolled over by many teams.
Overall, to say that we have some massive depth problem and that Barca proves it, or that other squads are way ahead of us, just isn't fair. We had a heck of a lot of injuries against Barca and that doesn't mean we should have gone for Grealish - or pushed the boat out for him any more than we did. It's easier to look back now with injuries across the board to say he would have gotten some games but we are in an unlucky period, it doesn't mean the decision taken was wrong in the summer. We can't just load up on players so that we have a back up to the back up, however nice it may be. The fact that he could have filled in deeper and further forward, and maybe on the wider positions would have been a bonus, but it really isn't the end of our world.
We haven't just had 'one or two injuries', we've had 2 of our key attacking midfielders out of the side at the same time. That is unfortunate. Often one of them may be out, but most of the time you have 2 or 3 of Lamela, Moura, Son, on the bench and that is bloody good. If Chelsea had Hazard and Willian out, Pedro and Barkley starting, Loftus-Cheek and Moses on the bench, suddenly people start saying the same thing about the depth of their squad, even though it's at that time those players should be playing. As I said, the idea of needing back ups to back ups is just silly. Either way, if we then start getting into a debate about whether Loftus-Cheek and Moses are better than whoever our back ups in the equivalent situation would be, it's a largely pointless one because if neither Chelsea's players or ours aren't playing, they aren't going to be in form, and they will be back ups for a reason. It won't make a grand bit of difference.
