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Injury update: Jonathan dos Santos out until April

As feared, it's a bad hamstring tear. What can Marcelino do to reolace him?

We're going to be without this guy for a while--a big loss
We're going to be without this guy for a while--a big loss
Maria José Segovia

J

Word is Jonathan dos Santos has a muscle tear in his left hamstring, and it's going to keep him out of action for a month and a half probably.  Bad news.  He's been a strong player for us on the right wing since becoming a regular there.

So what does Marcelino do now?  One possibility is of course to go with Samu Castillejo in his place; the problem with that is Samu is not as strong defensively, and hasn't convinced Marcelino he's a 90-minute player yet.  Nahuel Leiva could maybe play there, but after a strong preseason, he hasn't done much recently either.

One idea would be to move Manu Trigueros to that side.  Manu has played on the wing of our 4-4-2 before, and if he moved over there, we could bring Tomas Pina into the doble pivote.  Pina is a bit of a polarizing player among our fanbase, but he does offer some defensive bite that we would otherwise lose--and the key to our recent success has been our strong defense.

I'm tempted to suggest Manu-Pina-Bruno-Suarez when we play on the road (as this weekend), maybe against Levante at home we see Samu C-Manu-Bruno-Suarez.  Thoughts, anyone?