Tbh, I’d much rather use Tavernier or Patterson at centre back than have to put up with continuous use of Simpson.
Man, Simpson must have had the shocker of the decade last weekend, given the amount of bashing he`s received.
I vividly remember the moment when Tav decided to play the ball back into no-man`s land (i.e. exactly where the marauding Yahoo needed it) 2 seasons back, when they went on and beat us that day and kill any hopes of getting back into the title race. He`s also one of the few players of the MW era that played through all of the shame games under MW and PC. But yeah, lay into Simpson like there is no tomorrow.
For what it is worth, it would be a change if we start to swap tactics and formation according to the opposition we play. Ever since SG arrived we went Plan A and tried to make it work with better players (player MW never had). It worked after 3 (!) seasons, but as we can see week in and week out, it more often than not is toiling against the brickwall brigade of Scottish football.
Given what the opposition has thrown at us ... if anything bar the odd counter attack, you would have hoped that we switch to something like 3-5-2 or 3-4-3 rather than what we celebrate each week. De facto, we have to centre-halfs at the back, two DMs who mop up any possible attack (but usually play rather deep), two fullbacks who play the wingback role with a varying degree of success and three midfielders trying to assist the single striker. Even when we had strikers who can play across the front line in a top-3. And much of our success last season was down to our defence being utterly tight and pending on the daily form of our "attacking" midfielders, either in scoring the odd goal or managing to get a ball to the striker. De facto, we had/have one striker and a three attack-minded midfielders and some "marauding" fullbacks up against 5 to 8 defending players.
As much as we should actually play e.g. Roofe, Morelos AND Sakala up front, and anyone else behind that, against teams that dig in deep and rarely threaten, we could easily enough play a more attack minded Tavernier alongside Kamara in deeper MF (or as a right-sided back-3-centre-half), so both can counter any attempt of the opposition while the fullbacks venture forward. Tav also has the engine and willingness to attack or run into spaces (something we lack these days). Hagi and/or Aribo should be the creative attack-minded central MFs, Wright, Kent, Bacuna et al take turns as left/right-sided AMs behind the front 2 or 3.
We have the players for those roles, we need to use and utilize them. Not every game requires 2 DMs ...