You really need the quotation marks? You really didn't think Mason for example looked more tired against Chelsea than against Everton?
We don't have the squad currently to make wholesale changes without a massive dip in quality. Had players like Dembele, Paulinho, Townsend etc performed at a similar level as those they would replace then perhaps. If Chadli had shown the kind of defensive effort that we know Lennon puts in regularly and Eriksen put in against Everton, then perhaps. But we don't. So tiredness had to be weighed up against the quality and form of the players I think. When Poch did that, and he of course knows a lot more about how the players are doing than we do, one change made sense. It was also the position that most likely was expected to put in a real effort to stop Matic and Fabregas in particular from just running the game, so arguably the most important position to make a change in.
I disagree that it disrupted the whole team shape. I just cannot see how that can be true. And in the opening 20 minutes, if the whole team shape was disrupted, I have to say our players adapted tremendously well.
Whatever sense it makes to you our performance was quite good. We lost 3-0, but everyone including Mourinho could see that it was harsh. We conceded first and that obviously massively influenced the flow of the game, but everyone including Mourinho could see that up until then we looked the most likely to score and we had the better chances. Even after they got 70-ish minutes of sitting back and counter attacking thanks to the two quick goals they really didn't create much and although we put our shots wide the total shots stat was pretty close. We weren't played off the park, we weren't dominated, we just lost away to the best team in the league.
I have a feeling that if Kane had tucked away one of his early chances and we had gone on to get something from the game very few posters would have complaints about the one change Poch made.
