The body language is the part that is hard to defend. A full-back who lets the runner go and looks like the game is already over is a selection problem, not a form blip. Five relegations in five seasons is a career stat that follows him into every team sheet. It is not the whole story of those clubs. It is also not nothing.
Dropping him does not fix a side that has been called rotten in the same posts. It stops one of the clearer individual issues from being the weekly example. If the staff still see a player who can defend a wide area when the legs are there, he needs minutes where the effort is visible. The current version is not that.
