Re your last paragraph, has he thrown them under the bus?
If he did, I haven't heard that.
What I did hear him say is that he wanted to protect the younger players on the bench (i.e presumably not expose them to the current predicament), that it felt unreasonable to have to rely on only 13 first team players some of whom have already had to play 35 games, and that these players and given everything on the field and weren't being adequately supported
Others will see this as an attempt by him to shift blame, but I can't disagree with the the points he made