I think early on, managers do that just to give youngsters the experience of being on the bench in a competitive game. All about the experience etc and sometimes a good way of making sure they don't think they have "made it" is by not putting them on, but just letting them have a feel of things, seeing the game from a different perspective.
I agree though, especially when it came to Danns recently. We were crying out for a goal and he should have appeared more than he did. Call it protecting him or whatever, in days of old, if our first teamers weren't pulling up trees, we would give kids a go. When games have been dead and buried, you're not telling me it's a massive risk to replace a non-performing striker like Nunez or Gapko with Danns. What's the big risk? He might lose a 50/50? The others do that every game.
