Ross Barkley

[paul_e]

Feel bad for him that he's not in the Europea squad. He would have got a decent amount of game time plus likely a sub appearance in the final at least.

Probably first sub on if registered. Strange to the point of stupid why we registered Elliot instead. Emery has very little faith in our bench.

Presumably because in September we assumed that Elliot was going to be a crucial part of the first team squad, and in February we thought that including Abraham / Douglas Luiz / Bailey was more important to replace Malen / Kamara / Guessand than the Barkley / Elliot switch.

Elliot's goose was well cooked by Feb. Maybe Barkley was injured then but odd not to swap him in for Elliot either way.

You know that we could only make 3 changes, right? There was no way we were taking Elliott out given we already had 2 players who had left the club and one who was out for the season and clearly we weren't going to leave ourselves with no alternative to Ollie or not include Luiz when we'd signed him as a short term sub for Tielemans who was out. That left us to decide between another CM or a winger and given McGinn was out Bailey was always getting the nod, even if in hindsight we might as well have named a lampost.

[eye digress]

Barkley was injured at the start of the season, so that's why he wasn't registered.

Was he injured or "unavailable" while he dealt with "personal issues"?

Does it matter much?

Not in the grand scheme of things.

If you read back, I was responding to someone who was feeling sorry for him not being selected for the Europa squad, pointing out that it may not entirely have been misfortune.