I’ve had this post at the back of my mind for a few days, but now I sit down to write it I find that there’s little to be written, the squad speaks for itself. Check it out:-

If you find yourself with some time on your hands, I’d encourage you to check out some of our competitors’ squads from Wikipedia or somewhere and write them down in the same fashion. If you’re honest with yourself, I doubt that you will find many that have the quality we have as deep into their squad.

The trick will be how the manager utilizes them. MON only used 21 players in the Premiership last time out and it’s very much the vogue to use a team largely made up of second string players in the domestic cups, at least in the early rounds.

There’s 32 players above, all capable of doing a first team job at some time or another. If I were the manager and I didn’t have to be concerned with Europe, I’d be tempted to approach the league and cups as a whole and only make slight changes along the way for rotation purposes.

I’m a big believer in continuity and I believe it’s counter-productive changing half the team, more in some cases, between games. I also think it’s a little disrespectful to use reserve players to take you as far as you think they can go in a cup competition and then replace them with the big boys at the business end.

But anyway, I’m not the manager and unless you’re Martin O’Neill reading this, neither are you. The point is that the manager has assembled a strong squad based on the talent he inherited, the kids coming through the academy and the players he’s brought in himself.

It’s been three years in the making, but it’s now time to start delivering on the potential.

Actually, the last sentence made me want to look back at what MON inherited for comparison purposes.  How many of these would you want back:-

* Kevin Phillips & Ulises de la Cruz left before the end of August 2006.
** Peter Whittingham & Milan Baros left in January 2007.

It’s easy to forget how far we’ve come in a few seasons, isn’t it?