Two ways of looking at Inzaghi’s approach to the CL:
One is that it was extremely stupid, we could have easily secured top spot by prioritising it just a little more.
Another way of looking at it is that was both incredibly smart and brave:
Smart in the sense that we’ve secured promotion while resting our best players, ensuring we remain top domestically.
Brave in the sense that Inzaghi backs the team to face off against the world’s best.
I lean more towards stupid, but we’ll see.
It also really depends on what our goals are?
Is the goal to win Serie A and try to win the Champions League? If that's the goal, management needs to take the blame on having Alexis and Arnautovic as the rotation options.
Inzaghi knows the first 11 cannot perform at a high-level when playing every 3 days. We saw that twice this season - home against Sassuolo and home against Bologna. In both games, there was no rotation. We played our first 11 against Benfica and 3 days later that first 11 could not play at a high-level for more than 30 minutes against Bologna and collapsed.
Getting an 'easy' opponent and aiming to go far in the CL is great, as long as everyone understands that there's a good chance it may lead to not being able to finish 1st in Serie A.
I see a lot of posts here saying Inzaghi has to win the Serie A this season - if that's the case, this type of rotation is necessary. We've rotated in 5 out of 6 CL games, which is pretty unheard of. With that rotation, it's led us to second place in CL and first in Serie A for now. Maybe if we played full teams against both Benfica and Sociedad, we would finish first in the group. At the same time, it could also have led us to have some points less in the league.
If the expectation is for Inzaghi to win the league, I can understand this approach. It would be great if we can aim to win the league and the CL, but if that's the case, why are our backup strikers Arnautovic and Sanchez? That's on management for providing these backup options to Inzaghi.
At some point, Inzaghi needs to make a decision. Does he rest Thuram against Benfica or rest him away versus Napoli? Does he rest Lautaro versus Sociedad or away versus Lazio? There is always risk of losing points. Obviously, there is no guarantee that we beat Lazio after rotation, just like there is no guarantee we would have beaten Napoli if we would have played our starters versus Benfica.
When we lost the Scudetto to Milan, a big part of it was our slump due to CL matches - and even back then, I remember some posters complaining that we put so much energy into the Liverpool away match.