Keep Bennet at right back until Calde's back

[Silent Bob]

Whether he is a decent right-back or not is beside the point - that can be debated till we're blue in the face. The central point for me is that he is needed in the middle.

My take is that he hasn't played right-back for a while and could be a bit rusty performing those duties, Gus adores him where he is (professionally of course), and he is an excellent centre-back in his own right. Personally, I'd sacrifice a smidge of quality out wide if it meant keeping the spine of the side intact.

Fair enough, I just see it the complete opposite way. It can't be understated how good El-Abd has been really but Elphick is no dud and Bennett is the main creative player in the final third, yesterday we didn't need him so much as a lot of our best attacks were counter attacks anyway due to the situation but that probably won't be the case in the games coming up, so keeping that creativity in the team is the more important thing to me.

But as I said if we can get the Noone deal done for Saturday then it becomes much less of a problem anyway.

 

[BensGrandad]

I think that if Gus was forced to play El Abd at right back he would bring in Dunk to partner Greer rather than Elphick who I believe may be going out pon loan during January to get some games behind him.

 

[Hungry Joe]

Good to see the majority are of the opinion that El Abd shouldn't be moved. I'd forgotten about Smith and agree he would be a good choice in the usual Bennet role. Bennet's creativity isn't in doubt but his final ball has been lacking quite often this season so I think some are overplaying what a loss he would be at right back. Like I said I think the key to getting our earlier form back is keeping clean sheets first and foremost and my gut feeling is that by keeping the defence we had for 85 minutes last night is the best way of doing that.