I’ve covered the Premier League 25-man rules several times since it first cropped up so I won’t dwell on the details in this post. If you recall, last summer we named 22 players within our maximum of 25 players 21 years old or over on January 1st 2010 without any problems with the quota of “home grown” players. Including the academy players, we had no less than 36 additional players under the age of 21 also listed.
That stacked up favourably
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Martin O’Neill takes some stick over his rotation policy at Aston Villa, or lack of rotation to be more precise, and I think even his most ardent supporters are likely to agree that he could mix it up at least a little more than he does. Although I struggle to accept that professional athletes in their early 20’s get “tired” from playing a game or two of football a week (plus the travel and training of course), I’d count
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It doesn’t matter how you approach research, it’s almost impossible not to have a pre-conceived notion in your mind about what you’re going to find. Sometimes you’ll even be looking specifically for data to back up a position or opinion you already hold.
Personally, what I really enjoy about research is when I find that the raw data doesn’t match what I expected to find and challenges the ideas I had formed. In simple terms; I find that I’m
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All 20 Premier League clubs recently ratified a rule to restrict the size of their squads and install a quota on the number of “home grown” players. Personally, I’m a little surprised that they agreed to restrict the squads to 25 players since the majority of clubs have used more than 25 players a season for the last 2 years.
Granted, the clubs will get to submit the lists twice a year – at the end of the summer &
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Today is Match Day 1 in the Europa League and it’s a massive shame that Aston Villa won’t be taking part. It’s ironic that a strong, balanced squad has finally been assembled just in time to miss out on a major competition that would have stretched the squads of the past.
I was reading Martin O’Neill’s reflections today and he is equally sad to be missing out and also recognises the opportunity to utilize the squad that’s slipped through his
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The team got together for the annual team picture today available in a handful of dimensions at the OS here.
It was only recently that I was comparing the current squad with the squad MON inherited and I was again struck with the same thought as I looked at this year’s squad picture. Now we truly have the squad that MON built. I thought it would interesting to view the transition over the last 4 team pictures…
2006/07
2007/08
2008/09
2009/10
If
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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:-
Carew
Agbonlahor
Heskey
Delfouneso
Harewood
A Young
Petrov
Reo-Coker
Milner
Downing
Delph
Gardner
Albrighton
Bannan
Sidwell
Salifou
Herd
Warnock
Dunne
Cuellar
L Young
Shorey
Davies
Collins
Beye
Bouma
Clark
Lichaj
Lowry
Friedel
Guzan
Marshall
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
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