Leinster boss Leo Cullen accused some press of having a "nasty edge" after Leinster's PRO14 win over Munster on Saturday.
Leinster made four changes prior to the game, with four high-profile players being left out of the fifteen that played against Saracens.
Johnny Sexton and Scott Fardy were benched while Rob Kearney and Sean O'Brien were not in the 23.
But Cullen hit back at suggestions that players had been "dropped", saying it was right to freshen the team up.
“I see some of the headlines about the selections, I think people have a bit of a nasty edge,” Cullen told the Irish Mirror.
“I don’t know is that the people who write the articles or doing the headlines. You know, we need to freshen up the group, surely people understand that.
“Some of the things I see, players being dropped and all this, sensationalising some of the selections, I’m not a big fan of that. I don’t know who controls that, but it is what it is.
“We work hard in the group, coaches make selections week to week depending on what we think the challenges are.
“This week will be very similar. We’ll get assessed on how guys are physically, how they’ve come though the game, and all those bits as we normally would. We had to rely on a lot of players to get us to this point, and no doubt there’s one or two knocks, who are is the fittest players, we’ll see.”
Devin Toner ruled out of PRO14 Final after suffering knee injury in Leinster's win over Munster
