Aston Villa – Squad Size

Juan Pablo Angel is away and I’ve seen many a fan this week calling for the exit of Sorensen, McCann and even a suggestion we should sell Mellberg and replace him with Ridgewell.

I’m a keen believer that to do well in the Premiership or any top league, you need a mixture of experienced quality with the odd bit of youth thrown in.

My theory for the last few seasons has been our squad size is just too small. When injuries and suspensions hit you look at our bench and try to guess who is there. We have got by over using too many not ready young kids and its beginning to look like the pressure has told.

Samuel, older Moore, Davis, Ridgewell, Cahill, have hit a brick wall, Gabby was played through a very poor spell, albeit out of position, younger Moore, played too long with an injury, he survived, but will he push on, I hope so. None of those mentioned in my view are of the highest quality yet, although I have hopes for Cahill, Davis, Moore and Agbonlahor.

In all our effective squad now is 20 strong, I’ve excluded Bardsley, Delaney, Sutton and Samuel but included Taylor, Hughes, Berger, McCann, Ridgewell, all who could move away and Osborne,another of those over used unproven kids who I doubt will hold down a regular first team place next season.

If and its a big if, they all leave we would be left with a squad of 15, and of those 8 have played less than 10 games this season for various reasons.

None of our forwards Gabby apart, have over 8 Villa Premiership games which might explain why Gabby apart, they haven’t mustered 10 goals between them.

In addition, of that 15, I’d only class 7 of them as experienced. 7 experienced players in an effective squad of 15, and some fans seem hell bent on reducing those 15 even more, especially the experienced
players. Crazy.

Replace Sorensen, sell Mellberg, get rid of McCann I hear, get real I say, its squad building we need to do and for next season I’d expect O’Neill to do just that. I’d like to see some big names, I’d like to see us competing with the Manchester Utd’s of the world but for now I’d be happy going for players slightly down the scale, simply because we need experience as well as quality, ideally I’d prefer experienced quality.

We have plenty of young potentials, lets see a few experienced heads not necessarily older players mind, just experienced heads and plenty of them.

By AVFC48