Imagine what Poch will say if our injury situation plus lack of CM bite means we miss out on top 4? If we want to be a top team we need to stop the excuses...losing to Chelsea on penalties was one thing, but Palace? We were simply brick and no excuses for how injuries now mean we've lost 2 out of 3 since then whilst scraping past a brick Fulham team.[/QUOTE ]
To his credit Poch has always said no transfers, injuries, fatigue, difficult scheduling, bad refereeing and ground delays are not excuses, whereas I actually think they are considerations that mean us sitting in third and still in the CL whilst narrowly missing out on a cup final mean we are overachieving even more than the other seasons when we came in the top 3. The team he put out today was capable of winning the game, we missed two chances you'd expect any professional player to score and made 2 defensive errors, one of them by our record signing.
After today we will have Son back, hopefully in a months time Alli and Kane too, along with Dier to give us a third CM option. If we don't win matches against the likes of Palace when those players are all available I'd be surprised.
We do need to upgrade on a couple of players in the summer though, bad luck or not we need a viable 3rd alternative after Kane and Son, ideally one who can play AMF too so they can contribute in games where Kane is playing to keep them sharp or give us another option from the bench and another centre mid if Victor doesn't return to his previous levels.