Sourced from Daily Echo article
The staggering extent of Claude Puel’s player rotation - when will it stop?
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TODAY the Daily Echo can reveal the staggering extent of player rotation during Claude Puel’s short reign as Saints manager.
In total the St Mary’s chief has made a whopping 179 changes to his starting 11, during just 31 games in charge this season.
That is six changes in every single outing, with the manager never naming an identical side in consecutive matches.
Now Puel is set to continue humming the Hokey Cokey, with the Frenchman ready to shake it all about and put several players in and many others out during yet another testing fixture pile-up in the coming two weeks.
If Saints defeat Norwich in the FA Cup third round replay at St Mary’s tomorrow night, they will play five games in 14 manic days.
That conjures up multiple selection problems for Puel, especially in the striker department.
Saints have been in a similar position on numerous occasions during what will be their busiest-ever Premier League era season.
But there are several crucial differences to this latest blockbuster fortnight.
This time around, Saints are desperate for Premier League points, having lost their last four top-flight games.
Puel’s struggling side face two absolutely must-win league games, beginning against bottom-half rivals Leicester at home this Saturday, and then a trip to rock-bottom Swansea two weeks today.
The boss will want his best 11 fresh for those two showdowns, as Saints look to stop the rot.
However, it may not be that simple, because Puel is always adamant changes have to happen during such busy run-ins.
It throws in a monumental quandary when you type into his rotation calendar that Saints have their biggest game of the season so far, in the League Cup semi-final second leg at Liverpool, three days after facing Leicester.
It then gets even trickier when just a few days after that Anfield game, Saints have a potential FA Cup fourth round tie at home to Arsenal.
It seems most logical to play a young side – which is what is expected – against Norwich, before turning to the best 11 for Leicester and then Liverpool.
But typically – as the 179 changes testify – Puel will inevitably swap players around.
It means he’ll have to decide which his highest priority is: taking Saints to Wembley for the first time in 38 years and potentially lose to the Foxes, or put the League Cup final dream in jeopardy and go all out to stop the appalling league form.
The lack of goals is also something Puel needs to address carefully, because it seems to be a problem that has its roots in the rotation policy.
Saints have the second-lowest strike rate in the Premier League (19) after Middlesbrough (17).
First choice strikers in top-scorer Charlie Austin’s absence, Jay Rodriguez and Shane Long, have netted a paltry five goals between them in 20 hours of football.
Both of them have failed to really build momentum but, in the same breath, Rodriguez has started consecutive matches just once this season, while Long has done it on two occasions.
Rodriguez’s only back-to-back starts came at AFC Bournemouth – when he scored a brace – and the Tottenham defeat, but there was a ten-day gap between the two fixtures.
Long’s only run in the team came in the first two months of the season, when he started on the opening day against Watford and then in the following game at Manchester United.
Last season’s Supporters’ Player of the Year was then in the team for three games in a row against Sparta Prague, Swansea and Crystal Palace back in September.
Even when either of them score, Puel doesn’t have any qualms with dropping them (read our comment story here).
Long netted his only goal of the season against West Brom but was then instantly dropped in the following game.
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