It makes the most sense to start Mina in this game. I find it weird though how everyone who wouldn't shut up about how Mina can't possibly be considered for minutes prior to this because of X, Y, and Z reasons suddenly think that none of that matters all of a sudden. Is he an inexperienced scrub who needs to adapt, or not?
Quite telling that it's even a topic of discussion at all coming from Valverde if that report is true. I would rather play Fali as CB for the first team than Busquets and I'm sure Valverde doesn't like the idea either. If Mina doesn't play Thursday that essentially means he will not find success at all under Valverde, and considering the man will probably be here for 2-3 years, Mina probably won't find success here at all when he comes back from the 2nd/3rd loan he inevitably gets sent on while Valverde looks for a real defender.
Either way, I'm finally gonna find out how good this kid is, whether it be by watching him play, or by seeing how little faith the manager has in him. Interesting.
And before people flip out again about me hating this kid despite me never saying anything to indicate I do, I've actually got pretty high hopes for him because of his height and the praise I see from people like [MENTION=16751]Devils[/MENTION], but I've seen this show too many times by now to be stupid enough to buy into the hype of a player who's riding the bench.