Our defence this season, apart from the obvious City and Forest games, has been great and a real positive to take from the difficult season. When it came to facing Stoke I and a few other fans felt it would be the right decision for Sam to rotate the squad a little bit. One reason for this was because Reid was sitting on the bench and with other teams looking at him, sitting on the bench wasn’t helping our chances of getting him to sign a longer contract. Also if I was asked who the club’s best defender was I would always say Winston Reid so it seemed silly that he wasn’t playing.
Well the rotation didn’t quite pay off and our defence made stupid and uncharacteristic mistakes cost us 3 points. Reid came in for Collins, not that Collins deserved to be dropped and the rest of the back 3 stayed the same. Adrian didn’t have his best game but we can’t expect him to save us all the time especially for their first goal, we had players standing of the line and lapses of concentration meant they couldn’t stop it going in. Hard to believe but Reid was one of our worst players on Saturday, not something I would expect. I don’t know if it’s because he hasn’t played a full game for a while or he didn’t have that communication with Tonks that Collins has had over the last month but something wasn’t working.
Saturday is probably one of best chances to beat united, despite not winning the last 2 games we are still in quite good form and we really need the points. We came so close last season to beating them so there’s no reason why we can’t at the weekend. Defence wise, I don’t know who I’d start it’s going to such a tough decision. One thing I would definitely do is bring Armero in. United don’t have much pace and I think he would do really well in this big game. So what do you think is the best defence to go with? Tonks and Collins? Collins and Reid? Or Reid and Tonks?