Lhude sing, 'Buger!'
Yep, it's that time of year again. The weather in England has turned shitty: savagely cold, relentlessly wet. And the fixture schedule - squeezed on one side by an expanded programme of European competition, World Cup qualifiers, and the minor domestic annoyance of the early League Cup ties, and on the other by the magnanimous but probably misguided desire to shoehorn a 'mini-break' of sorts into the League programme in early January - is entering the inevitable December logjam.
Most of the other major European football leagues enjoy a full 3 or 4 weeks off from just before Christmas - when the weather is at its worst, and players want to be able to spend a little time off with their families. In England, we only ge a scant 9 days in January, and only by virtue of playing twice in a week straight after the New Year. Starting this weekend, there are 9 Premer League gameweeks in just under 6 calendar weeks.
The rate of injuries, unfortunately, will inevitably soar. Performance levels will plummet. 'Rest rotations' will abound. Most teams experience a bit of a wobble in their results; some regularly seem to crash during this period (ahem, Arsenal - let's hope they're over that now!).
Now, more than ever, you will need your bench. All through December (and possibly on through much of January and February too if we have a really bad winter) you'll be very, very lucky if you don't need at least 1 auto-sub - sometimes, perhaps, 2 or 3 - to replace last-minute omissions in almost every gameweek. And even if all your regular starters are going to play, there will probably be occasions when you wish they weren't, because you can tell they're getting knackered and are not likely to have a good game next time out; you want to have the flexibility to be able to rotate players in and out of your starting lineup.
If you don't have a full bench now, and a strong bench, you're likely to suffer through a brutal winter.
