Warnock as adventurous as a nun

[the other bob wilson]

At this point in the season mid-table teams should still put out as strong a team as they can against teams who are competing for something, it would reflect very badly if we went with an experimental side, we got smashed 5-0 and Wednesday gained an advantage on someone else based on goal difference

You're right, I've seen it called the integrity of the league - there is an obligation on managers of mid table sides to put out as strong a team as possible when they are playing a side with something still left in their season. Therefore, I owe Russell Slade a partial apology for persistently accusing him of wasting an opportunity to field youngsters during the last two months of the 14/15 season. I can remember us playing a Millwall side battling, unsuccessfully as it turned out, against the drop in our penultimate home game that season and there would have been criticism from others in the relegation issue at the time if we had picked an experimental team and lost that match.

We also played play off chasing Brentford and Ipswich during that period, so they were other matches where Slade's selections could be understood, but the reason I only said a partial apology is that we also faced Charlton, Birmingham, Reading, Bolton, Leeds, already relegated Blackpool and Forest in games that had little or nothing riding on them during that period and Slade resolutely failed to give youth a chance - he is the worst City manager I've seen up until now as far as youth development is concerned.

As for Neil Warnock, it's very easy to forget how annoyed he was with other managers who he thought picked weakened sides against other relegation candidates when his Sheffield United team went down from the Premier League in 06/07 I think it was. He has spoken of hoping to give players like Harris and Meite some game time in our remaining matches if he is able to. When I first heard him say that I was puzzled, because I thought it was entirely his own decision as to who he picked, but it makes sense if he is thinking that he doesn't want to do to other teams what he believes others did to him ten years ago.

Anyway, by including the likes of Harris and Meite in the squad in many of our recent matches and giving the former his first team debut in an FA Cup match, Warnock has already shown more willingness to get young players involved than Slade ever did and he's also selected a side that had more of an experimental look to it for the "nothing" game at Barnsley recently than anything Slade ever picked.