Yeah, that was a surprise & I wouldn't have selected him. I can only think he wanted to utilise his creativity to help spring quick counter-attacks. Needless to say, it didn't work.
My point really is that it wasn't something MR just fancied doing on a whim or that he was "shitting himself". He, and particularly AV, will have identified things we needed to prepare against & also things we could possibly exploit.
Ultimately, as I said, we got it wrong. It was nearly right but it took too long to get a grip of the game, we were all over the place early on & it cost us.