So for the last 2 weeks we've heard nothing but "small squad". The press keeps saying smallest squad in the Premiership, the fans thus believe it and we all worry that an injury or two will crucify us, however one thing we failed to consider is if it is actually true? I found it hard to believe our rivals had all these fantastic players in reserve, surely they wouldn't be able to keep them all happy, so I went and did the maths myself. Lo and behold what do I find?
Most of these "Big squads" our rivals have are filled with players who have one 90th minute substitute appearance to their name. Some have never even played a Premiership game, never mind a game in a top division. personally I can't consider a 20 year old who has made 10 appearances for the MK Dons as a senior player. So why do they get listed as part of a bigger squad?
Take Sebastián Leto for Liverpool, 21 year old Argentinian - he has never played a Premier League game not even as a sub, so should Liverpool have an spate of injuries and he's called into the side he would be about as prepared as any of our reserve and academy players many of whom grew up in the English game and have played on loan at the lower leagues.
If we eliminate all these fringe players from each team, including our own we are left with a core first squad, the players with the experience to play at this level and those who may not have played Premiership games but have enough experience in other top leagues to make the grade or at least more than a token work permit cap at international level. For some reason the magical number that came up was 22, we were a player short sadly even though he has 37 caps I can't bring myself to include Salifou in the Villa core squad.
Villa :
Thomas Sørensen
Wilfred Bouma
Olof Mellberg
Martin Laursen
Gareth Barry
Ashley Young
Luke Moore
Marlon Harewood
John Carew
Gabriel Agbonlahor
Stuart Taylor
Curtis Davies
Zat Knight
Stiliyan Petrov
Nigel Reo-Coker
Wayne Routledge
Scott Carson
Patrik Berger
Craig Gardner
Isaiah Osbourne
Shaun Maloney
Total: 21
Osbourne has just enough first team experience to make it but barely, Salifou misses out as does Steiber and O'Halloran although I will not be including players who are on loan at other clubs.
Everton :
Tony Hibbert
Leighton Baines
Joseph Yobo
Joleon Lescott
Mikel Arteta
Andy van der Meyde
Andrew Johnson
Thomas Gravesen
James Vaughan
Phil Jagielka
Tim Cahill
Phil Neville
Nuno Valente
Steven Pienaar
Leon Osman
Yakubu Aiyegbeni
Manuel Fernandes
Tim Howard
Lee Carsley
Victor Anichebe
Stefan Wessels
Anthony Gardner
Total: 22
I culled quite a few from the Everton squad, the likes of Rodwell, Gosling and Ruddy have never played for the first team.
Manchester City :
Andreas Isaksson
Micah Richards
Michael Ball
Nedum Onuoha
Michael Johnson
Stephen Ireland
Geovanni
Émile Mpenza
Elano
Darius Vassell
Martin Petrov
Vedran Ćorluka
Sun Jihai
Dietmar Hamann
Richard Dunne
Javier Garrido
Gelson Fernandes
Valeri Bojinov
Nery Castillo
Total: 19
Man City had a surprisingly small squad their wasn't an awful lot to cull, new signing Filippo Mancini despite the flashy name has only ever played 10 minutes of professional football so he's out, I simply couldn't include Kasper Schmeichel based on 7 games and their was others like Etuhu who have played even less. We will see what happens with Benjani.
Liverpool :
Steve Finnan
Sami Hyypiä
Daniel Agger
John Arne Riise
Harry Kewell
Steven Gerrard
Fernando Torres
Andriy Voronin
Yossi Benayoun
Fábio Aurélio
Xabi Alonso
Peter Crouch
Jermaine Pennant
Álvaro Arbeloa
Dirk Kuyt
Ryan Babel
Javier Mascherano
Jamie Carragher
Pepe Reina
Charles Itandje
Martin Škrtel
Total: 21
I expected Liverpool to have a much more impressive squad depth wise but there were a lot of questionable players in there, I have been fairly strict on a couple Lucas has played 6 games, most as a late sub. He is a Brazillian international but somehow I doubt a late appearance against Algeria makes him Premiership material. Škrtel was a hard call with only one Liverpool appearance against us but he's played enough at Zenit that he is left in. Liverpool have more fancy names than most but the majority of them are totally unproven like Emiliano Insúa with only two professional football appearances to his name.
Blackburn :
Brad Friedel
André Ooijer
Stephen Warnock
Christopher Samba
Tugay Kerimoğlu
Ryan Nelsen
Brett Emerton
Roque Santa Cruz
Benni McCarthy
David Bentley
Morten Gamst Pedersen
Zurab Khizanishvili
Steven Reid
Aaron Mokoena
Stephane Henchoz
Maceo Rigters
Paul Gallagher
David Dunn
Bruno Berner
Sergio Peter
Matt Derbyshire
Jason Roberts
Total: 22
On paper Blackburn have some impressive experience in their squad but in terms of numbers are very light, the likes of Keith Treacy and Eddie Nolan are no more prepared for the Premiership than our own Tobias Mikaelsson so they have been culled along with a few others like the excellently named: Gunnar Nielsen who has had an impressive total of five games for "BK Frem" - sounds like a burger.
I took a quick glance at a couple of other sides around us with much the same result, Portsmouth have around 23 half of which are strikers, Spurs also had 23 who's names I recognised and finally West ham have probably the most depth of all with around 25/26 players so we can look forward to MON adding the likes of hayden Mullins in the summer.
Overall I was quite surprised with these findings, it's hard to get a clear picture without going into more depth but with the average at 22 I can't see any of these teams having more than one player covering each position and surely some of them must have similar problems to us with depth in places like right/left back.
I think one very pointless arguement can be put to rest, we are no worse off than our rivals when it comes to squad size. On paper they may have more players but in reality had martin O'Neill been giving reserve and academy players 2 minutes of injury time here and there so would we. Now the question that remains, we have the quantity but do we have the quality???
