A few days ago a story appeared on the OS that featured a quote from Martin O’Neill that he’s rightly taken some stick over:-

At the end of last week, I went to a meeting for managers and they put up some interesting statistics. They showed that 17 of our lads had played in the Barclays Premier League last season. Other teams had used 23, 27 and others over 30. I was a wee bit surprised. I knew how many we had used but I didn’t realise it was less than anyone else.

Frankly, I’m a wee bit surprised that he’s a wee bit surprised, but this story has been bugging me as that claim of only 17 players being used in the EPL last season seemed low, even for Villa. I had chance to look at it and it should be understood that Villa only started 17 players last season, they used 21.

We’re bottom of the league in terms of number of players utilised however you slice or dice it. The devil may well be in the detail, but if you consider that Liverpool only used 23 players in the league and Everton 25, is it really all that bad? West Brom used 30, Newcastle 29 and Boro 28 and they all got relegated… so the point of getting upset over this number is what exactly?

Anyway, I had the data for the 2007/08 season to hand, it’s my pleasure to share the squad utilization over the last couple of years with you, sorted by number of players used.

If you’re interested, the 17 players who made starts were B Friedel, G Barry, A Young, S Petrov, G Agbonlahor, C Davies, L Young, J Milner, C Cuellar, N Reo-Coker, N Shorey, M Laursen, J Carew, Z Knight, S Sidwell, E Heskey, & C Gardner.

The other 4 players who only made appearances from the bench were M Harewood, N Delfouneso, W Routledge, & B Guzan.

And the dozen squad members who didn’t see any action in last season’s Premiership were S Taylor, W Bouma, B Bannan, M Albrighton, S Lowry, E Lichaj, N Baker, E Parish, M Salifou, C Herd, C Clark, & I Osbourne.