Thomas Frank - Head Coach

[braineclipse]

He swapped the striker (Richie replaced Tel) on 73 so that is straightforward.

Then on 74 he swapped the tiring #10 Xavi for a box to box Sarr to make us more solid as the team would naturally be getting more tired.

Then at 85 he made the big change, brought on a CB and took off the left sided attacker (Danso came on for Odobert)

Then on 90 mins brought on Johnson for Kudus to play on the right side.

I would have liked all of these subs 10 minutes earlier each, but that's just me, I always want to rest players up.

Seeing Palhinha charging around is superb right now, but he needs a bit of resting, he can't do too many 90s.

It worked and we've gotten into a good habit of not conceding late or turning wins into draws.

The plan of defending through taking off our best technical players to put on more physical and defense first players who lack technical quality I hope is one option out of several. I'm quite glad it mostly happened rather late.

We have been a bit lucky (based on xG, but also just the eye test, we're yet to drop points in games we deserved to win and have edged out several close games). That won't keep happening at the same rate across a season, but I'll definitely take it and hope we can improve our overall level of performance to the level where these results can become sustainable.