"Guice is not a good idea.", I realise this is the accepted wisdom but can you clarify your point? 

I cant see what the objection is, obviously you can solve the problem of stubbing dependencies using mutable fields: 

https://github.com/guardian/frontend/blob/master/common/app/contentapi/http.scala#L43

but its just slightly cleaner doing it with dependency injection, I dont see what the objection is. 

After all if this turns out to be problematic the cost of change is to just implement the code guice saves you having to write.