Maybe not in hindsight, but at the time it was reasonable. A risk, but The consquences could potentially have been way worse. And for reasons i have stated before, Malcolms expected contribution would have been shit. Thats why Ev risked dembele. Geez.
Taking responsebility, doesnt mean one should be blamed. He took a risk, that made sense. Chl and treble was on the line. So no reason to witchhunt him.
Reasonable in the eye of Valverde. Very few others. Just reread this thread or people's reactions on social media, local media etc. Certainly not an objective fact. "Reasonable" is certainly the wrong word to use.
The objective fact on the other hand, as admitted by Valverde, was that he risked an injured Dembélé. It is that simple.
Could, would etc. We could have won that leg 8-1 combined and nobody would have blinked an eye. 15 minutes of bad play out of 160 minutes of total dominance. We would have won that game regardless. LOL, at the "Malcom's contribution would have been shit" comment. Already gave you examples of why that would not necessary (at all) have been the case (most likely the opposite as proven before by my examples) and even more so when Dembélé was unfit and injured going into the game.
No need to tell me why Valverde shat his pants and risked Dembélé only for him to potentially miss 1 month.
He admitted to being wrong and took full responsibility. How difficult can this be to understand? I don't get it. You have his own words. I know that you love Valverde but this is beyond stupid now.
As other users rightly pointed out in this very thread (from what I could quickly see), Valverde would have had zero problems risking a player like Malcom in such a game, had his management of him been significantly better. Again you are telling me that a 21 year old Malcom that just had a MoM performance against RM 6 weeks prior (before disappearing from the surface of the earth), while up to that said game having disappeared from said surface as well, could not have created danger and stretched the pitch and made runs without the ball with 25 minutes left against a tired Lyon team? The same guy that has scored 4 goals in 4 games against pretty much the exact same Lyon team. That BTW was extremely average in both games. The combined 5-1 victory (over 2 legs) flattered them which is saying something.
Anyway last comment in this discussion as there is little more to add other than hoping that Dembélé will have as quick a return as possible and that he will return stronger and NOT commit a similar unnecessary mistake due to shitting his pants.