Aye, it was clear what he was doing, but it was still the wrong call. Shinnie did get stuck in when moved to midfield, but I'm not convinced it was the real problem. Palaversa just stopped retaining possession and looked confused at being on a football pitch. Polvara is capable enough to put his foot on the ball and try to play the game. I'd say he's quite similar to Palaversa. The biggest problem about the change was the change to the winning formula on left and right though. Jensen isn't a left back (I'd rather see Devlin there, at least he'd keep things simple and be aggressive) at all, and we just had a gaping hole where Shinnie had been, as well as disrupting our back four. A positive improvement in midfield, outweighed by a negative at fullbacks. When you're 2-1 up, you probably shouldn't be fucking about too much with the back line.
It's a big problem in the coming fixtures though. Clarkson seems to have found his feet, and is now able to play ninety minutes at the tempo Thelin wants, but Palaversa is still a good bit short. With Nilsen out, we're going to need someone capable of playing that last thirty minutes, as it's a hell of a lot to ask of Shinnie after running up and down the line for an hour. I can only assume that he thinks Polvara doesn't have the work rate required to play there.