Opinion: Blues’ final pre-season game tells us all we need to know about Karanka’s setup

I think we may have finally found the answer to the question ‘what is Aitor Karanka’s first eleven’?

Because there was a significant difference to the team that faced off against Spurs than the one that faced off against Walsall yesterday.

I’d sort of hinted at it after the game on Saturday, but when I first looked at the line-up for the Walsall game, my immediate reaction was ‘there’s the subs on the left, and the first eleven on the right’, with the obvious exception of Andres Prieto who I assume Karanka wanted to give an extra few minutes to in order to get him prepped for the season.

There’s still the question as to how many more veteran players are going to be knocking on the door, with recent arrivals like Jon Toral and Adam Clayton yet to get many significant minutes in pre-season, but hopefully they’ll get their chance to shine sooner rather than later.

Now though, attention turns to Blues’ first competitive game of the season against Cambridge United this weekend. Listening to the commentary on BluesTV yesterday, they did briefly chat about team selection and what it could look like, although they didn’t really reach a definitive answer.

I spoke a few weeks ago about the sort of team that Karanka could play, and in my mind I think he will keep the ‘first team’ and ‘substitutes’ mantra going for that game as well, in essence use this as another pre-season friendly to get things right and ready for when the season does return next week against Brentford.

I just hope that we do get to see some of the club’s youngsters getting a go during the game as well, ideally once we’ve got the job done.

Because even though it looks like he has his team sorted out, there should always be time to look to the academy in these situations.