[wba_1996]

As for the McAuley/Lescott thing, I have been saying on here for at least 2 years that we need a younger ball-playing centre back to replace/understudy McAuley. Its ok playing one 32+ year old centre back but you need a bit of mobility to cover for them as well. It was glaringly obvious to me 2 years ago that GMac would start to decline, so why our joke of a recruitment team thought that a 35 year old McAuley would be able to keep up his performance levels I don't know. Yet again it smacks of the cheap option of leaving Olsson who is clearly not a capable back up. Now Lescott looks crap because both our centre backs are strong in the air but can't run for shit, meaning that every single through ball that gets through is likely to lead to a goal - even Zamora left them for dead last week. They are not helped, of course, by the fact that neither fullback has an ounce of pace either.

The only solution is to play Dawson at centre back with Lescott and play with actual fullbacks - but we can't have that can we?

The long-term solution is for our recruitment team to not be a bunch of idiots and for us to not go for the cheap option every time.