For me it has to be. It's the epitome of a dead rubber in between Wolves away and Villa at home, even if they are games we should be winning, not forgetting we have a game tonight and plenty more coming after that. Hoping it's just exclusively fringe players and youngsters for Milan. The likes of Milner, Keita, Gomez etc could all get games if fit though.
We've got 10 games in 31 days, starting today.
Milan and Leicester in League cup are 2 obvious games to rest the likes of Salah, Mane, VvD, TAA, Fabinho etc.. I do wonder what we do at Milan though.
Even not playing in those games 8 games in 31 days is still a lot. I'm not sure all our key players can and will start all 8. Therefore there'll need to be some rotation, particularly when it's Sat-Wed-Sat (or equivalent).
Maybe tonight is not the game to do it. Maybe it's to go much weaker versus Newcastle at home (Thursday 16th) before Spurs away (Sunday 19th). Maybe 5 or 6 changes in that game is where we need to be. Equally Leeds on 26th and Leicester on 28th will need some rotation - only 55 hours between the 2 games (though slightly less for Leicester who play City at 3pm on 26th).
The alternative is that rather than making lots of changes in 1 or 2 league games we make 1-3 for most games. Particularly when the main lads are playing 3 games in a week. Never at absolute full strength but never far off it.
I suppose my overarching point is that we'll need to rotate quite a bit over the next month. Our best players probably won't start every league game in this period.Even though we'd all like them to. It wouldn't surprise me if that more extensive rotation started tonight. I view Everton away as the game I'd like to win above all others. For me they are our biggest rival by some distance and beating them on their patch is, in isolation of a single game, the best thing we can do in a season. I'm not advocating rotation as someone who views Everton as an insignificant rival. It's just weighted against the reality of the fixture list and thinking that tonight may be the start of more rotation.