This is my main frustration with Benitez - his insistence with sticking with this 4-4-1-1 system.
I get that it works better with Doucoure in it, that's fine. But he's coming back from six weeks out. Allan has a muscle strain so he's not trained fully. Brentford play a midfield three and it's not like Rondon and Iwobi are worth the trade off.
If we're going to play Rondon then we need to get players around him. 4-4-1-1 isolates whoever the forward is.
We need a platform to build from. Win the midfield battle. Go solid for the first hour and you have Gray to bring on and, if you desperately need someone to uselessly run around for 10 minutes, Iwobi at the end.
If he's starting Townsend central again then that's going to negate the few things Iwobi is good at and take away from Townsend's game too. Really, really frustrating.
Not been funny Tubes, but we have 3 first teamers out, Brentford by my count have the same. Our squad isn't worse than theirs.