So after last night, where we won comfortably in spite of it being a single goal win, Brendan is faced with a dilemma.
There was no Leigh Griffiths in the starting eleven; that suggested that the player was being kept in reserve, awaiting the midweek game, but Brendan revealed afterwards that there was a much darker reason for his absence; Leigh’s calf muscle continues to play up.
There are issues there, it seems, perhaps issues with medium term consequences.
In addition, Nir Bitton continued at centre back, a position to which he is manifestly unsuited. I like Nir, but I thought he would leave this summer. Brendan sees something in his which he likewise enjoys, but we all know he’s not a defender. A late challenge – not a penalty as some in the media hysterically claimed last night, because the player was going down before the contact – suggested uncertainty and a lack of the timing required for the role.
There are options within the squad, of course; I would have no problem seeing Ajer play there against Astana in these coming games … but for the first time today there are hints in the media that Brendan is increasingly looking outside the squad for the solution. Reports suggest that we’re in for a South African defender, Rivaldo Coetzee, of Ajax Cape Town. There’s also talk of a striker being brought to the club before the window shuts.
All of this, clearly, is good news. Anything that increases the overall firepower in the squad is good news, but it defeats, for this window, Brendan’s stated purpose of adding the kind of players who will go straight into the starting eleven and stay there.
We can already see that Ntcham is one of those players.
We may yet add others … but the integrity of the squad is clearly the first priority and if our defensive crisis is going to hurt us and our forwards are both going to miss key games then it’s a no-brainer in the short to medium term and has to be done.
We won’t spend big money on either position, so that mitigates the risks.
The risk is signing someone explicitly for Wednesday.
Does Brendan do that, and throw someone untested into the side? Or does he stick with what he has for now and go for Champions League qualification with what is in hand? Either scenario presents its own risks. The rewards, as we all know, are enormous.
The other issue, of course, is that Brendan can only add one player in one position, even if he was thinking of playing a brand new footballer in such a massive match. Where is our need greatest? Up top or at the back? Goals or the prevention of them?
To me, the clean sheet at home is everything. I am confident we’ll score, so preventing goals takes priority. I’m just not convinced that either we need a new defender (as Ajer or Lustig can play centre back easily alongside Jozo) or that we would sign one and then throw him straight into the team. One player for each position would leave a lot of us feeling way more relaxed, but when we have a fully fit squad again a lot of people won’t even make the bench.
I’m the last guy who would ever make a case for why we shouldn’t sign anyone, and I’m not making that case here, but is the need for a signing so acute that we’d risk putting them into a team on short notice for such a massive, massive game?
Good players can do that though. Scott Sinclair had no sooner put pen to paper than he was scoring the winner in his debut match against Hearts. Sometimes these things pay dividends. Sometimes not. But there’s such a thing as playing it too safe.
For Brendan here there’s no such thing.
Any decision he makes is fraught with risk.
The commentary team last night was second-guessing him before kick-off without even knowing the full facts.
None of us will be second-guessing him, come what may.
Trust in Brendan has been our coda since he arrived and he’s not let us down yet.