I haven’t had chance to get an End of Season Review post out for a little while, so I’m throwing this one in as a “quickie”. If you’re expecting to find Aston Villa at the bottom of this squad rotation table, you won’t be disappointed. If you feel so inclined, you could take a quick glance at the tables for the previous two seasons first. You’ll find that 2009/10, on this basis, was an improvement. Not much, but an improvement all the same.

During 2009/10, MON used a total of 23 different players in the Premiership and handed starts to just 20. In 2008/09 he used 21 and started 17 and in 2007/08 that was 22 and 18.

I should offer a quick explanation about the first column below – ‘# Squad’ – the number of players in the squad. This is compiled based on a player being named in an 18 man squad for at least one game in any competition. Unfortunately I can’t filter it easily, so if a manager called some kid to sit on the bench during a League Cup game in Huddersfield, then they’re counted in this column, even if they didn’t see a second of time on the pitch all season.

I actually have much better quality data this year, right down to the number of minutes played for every player in the league, but you’re not ready for that yet. Hopefully that data will allow us to drill into something a little more illuminating, but it definitely means I’ll be doing a follow up on the Actim Top 100 Index and we’ll see who scored the best based on the amount of actual time they played.

For now though, let’s keep it simple. Here’s the table primarily sorted by number of players used and number started as a secondary sort:-

No major surprises, but I’m starting to wonder where the optimal level of rotation might lie. We’ve been reasonably fortunate with injuries, as we are most seasons, so MON hasn’t had many changes forced upon him. The same can’t be said of the other managers. There was a period, for instance, where Fergie literally had no option but to play Michael Carrick at centre half – surely that has an affect on his numbers at the end of the season?

Looking back at 2008/09 briefly, Liverpool were the very next team above us. Rafa used 23 players, 2 more than Villa, and also started 23. In 2009/10 he used 30 and started 25. Liverpool finished below us just in case you’re curious about why I selected the reds.

Portsmouth top this table, but sat at the foot of the real table. Derby held the same record in 2007/08. Clearly this is a table to occupy the middle ground in.

But would a little more rotation have delivered a better record for Villa this season? Impossible to say. Of course, it could have… but it could equally have backfired. There’s no formula for this, just like there’s no formula that tells us how many points we’ll be guaranteed for every million we spend on buying new players.

Perhaps the fixture list was kind to us, but 13 points from 15 in April makes the tiredness argument look a little weak to me.