You won’t need me to tell you, you’ll no doubt recognise this team right away, but if not, it’s the starting eleven from the FA Cup 5th round at Eastlands that caused so much anger:

Look at it again. They’ve been called “kids”, “reserves”, “B-Team” and much more. Aside from Chris Herd – who had been named in 12 of the 35 match squads before that game by the way – who else could be called a “reserve”?

Friedel? Nope. Clark? Not really. Dunne? Hardly! Delph? He’s been out through injury, but I’d like to think he would have played a decent part in this season.

Bradley? He’s with us on loan, so nope. Petrov? Please. Gabby? Nope. Heskey? Do me a favour, love.

So that leaves Bannan and Delfouneso.

So, they then go out on loan and once again there’s much virtual gnashing of teeth across the interwebz: “Houllier’s an idiot”, “he doesn’t know what he’s doing”, “he’s destroying our club from the inside”, “what’s going on at AVFC?”.

And on and on it goes.

I’ve even seen someone expressing disbelief that we’ve kept Heskey, but loaned out Delfouneso. Are they really that dense? Do they really think that a) Heskey would be interested in joining a Championship club on loan and b) a Championship club would be on the hunt for a £40k a week player to help them in the push for the play-offs?

We’ve nine games left and we’re just three points from danger. Rightly or wrongly, as far as seniority goes, Delfouneso is number four in the pecking order of strikers right now and we’re largely using a one striker system. As they say in America, you do the math.

And it’s pretty much the same situation with Barry Bannan. To use another cliché; this really isn’t rocket science.

But, looking further ahead, feeling confident that we’ll not be sucked into the black hole of relegation, wouldn’t actually playing in a dozen or so games in the Championship be better experience for Bannan and Delfouneso than watching nine Premiership games from the bench in the hope that someone gets injured?

Bear in mind that there will inevitably be a clear out of high earners during the summer and it’s exactly the likes of Bannan and Delfouneso that we’ll probably be relying on heavily next season.

We know there’s a recall clause in Bannan’s loan deal, let’s assume there’s something similar in Delfouneso’s. If that’s the case, if we find ourselves with another injury crisis that our 23 remaining players can’t cope with (plus actual reserves of course), we can bring them back.

So, seriously, what’s not to like about these loans? Except the manager making the decision, natch.