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 myself among that group. He definitely could spread the load around a bit more.

I was going to wait until the end of the season to check out the squad rotation figures, as I have in the past, but with 10 vitally important games left to go and calls for rotation never louder, I figured it might be an interesting marker to throw down now. We’ll have another look at the end of the season, but I wouldn’t expect any crazy changes.

Firstly, here’s the overview table (sorted by appearances):-

I wouldn’t suggest that wanting to be near the top of any table headed by Pompey is much of a good thing and, for once, mid-table mediocrity could well be the order of the day on this subject.

A couple of quick notes about the numbers in the above table. ‘Total Used‘ is the number of players who have made at least one appearance in the Premiership this season, even from the bench for a minute. ‘Starters‘ are number of different players used in the EPL starting line-ups. The ‘Squad‘ number is the total number of players named in any squad in all competitions and this is actually the source of greatest criticism for the manager being the only boss to name less than 30 players all season.

As ever though, the devil is in the detail and once you start trawling through the data we’re not as dramatically different from some of our rivals as it might appear at first glance.

The Hundred Percenters

All but 5 of the 20 Premiership teams have either one or two players who have started every league game, those exceptions being Hull, Portsmouth, Stoke, Tottenham and Wolves. In fact, Portsmouth stand out here by some margin as the most starts by a Pompey player is 23 from their 29 games.  They’ve really had to spread it about a bit.

At Arsenal, Thomas Vermaelen has started all 30 games. At Chelsea, John Terry has started all 29 league matches. Even at Liverpool and Man Utd, with all their enforced changes, there are players who have started every game; Jose Reina has started all 30 Liveprool games and Patrice Evra has been on all 30 of Ferguson’s teams sheets.

There are no cookies for knowing that Brad Friedel has started all 28 games for Aston Villa this season, he’s actually still in the process of setting the Premiership record for consecutive starts (currently 215) so it would be grossly unfair to criticise any manager for not benching him. Where Villa’s statistics stand out is the next rung down the ladder; we actually have a cluster of 5 players who have played 27 games each. Go on then, a virtual cookie for you if you can name them.

Gabby, Ash, Petrov, Milner and Carlos Cuellar have started 27 games, but Gabby’s late run out against Stoke this past week means he has actually appeared in all 28 games. Behind them, Dunne has started 25, Warnock 20 and James Collins 16. That trio are significant as they joined us in September with games for the previous clubs already under their belts and they’ve been ever present enough to assume that MON would have picked them if he could. Still, I can only report on what has happened, not what might have happened if things had been different.

Depth

I’m not sure of a good way to explain this, but I’m going to resist the urge to just dump the table in and I’ll do my best. I’ve already mentioned that the majority of clubs have a few players who have started close to all of their league matches, but what happens if you take a step or two further back? What are the numbers like for 20 games, or 15 games? Glad you asked.

Wigan and Birmingham have the most players with at least 20 starts in their squad – 10. Chelsea, Bolton and Fulham all have 9 players with a minimum of 20 starts. Villa are in the same boat as Everton, Burnley and Arsenal with 8 players who can boast 20 starts this season. Stoke, Tottenham, Blackburn and Liverpool can all name 7 players who have started at least 20 Premiership games this season.

West Ham lead the way with 14 players who have been named in the starting line up at least 15 times this season, half of their Premiership schedule. Man City have 13, Liverpool, Tottenham and Sunderland all 12 players with a minimum of 15 starts. Stoke, Arsenal, Blackburn, Bolton, Chelsea, Birmingham and Portsmouth all have 11 players. Villa, Wolves and Utd have 9 players, with only Hull having less players with at least 15 starts – 8.

It’s easy for the point to get lost in the numbers, but the picture I see is that of a core bunch of players, similar in size and having played a similar number of games to players at other clubs. The real difference is that the players around the periphery, the supporting cast if you like, is a smaller group and played more than is the case elsewhere.

And once you get down to the very lowest numbers you start to see where some of the distortions lie. Liverpool, for instance, have 4 players with a single start to their name, but Voronin headed off to Moscow and Dossena to Napoli in January. If you were wondering; Jay Spearing and Daniel Ayala are the other two Liverpool players with a single start.  With Rafa starting 24 players this season and MON only 20, is it really so bad?  (In fairness, if I’m disqualifying Rafa’s 4 players with only 1 start, I should do the same with Ciaran Clark, but you get what I’m driving at).

The Run In

Over the next 10 games we shall see whether MON mixes the team sheets up a bit, but I wouldn’t hold my breath. They say that you don’t change a winning team and since we’re still unbeaten in the Premiership in 2010 I’d certainly agree that if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it. As long as we keep this form up, who else could really argue?

Well, no one, but the problem will come should the form stubble somewhat and I’m not willing to bet that we’ll go unbeaten for the rest of the season. At that point, all the McExperts will emerge and sagely point out that MON doesn’t rotate so these professional athletes are all tired, bless the poor little lambs.

I mentioned recently that there’s one or two signs of fatigue in the side and that’s something a little different from physical tiredness. Back in March 2008, Villa were doing their usual March thing under MON by failing to win and there was much wailing and gnashing of online teeth at MON’s apparent failure to strengthen the squad during January. How tired all the players were, especially the then 21 year old Gabby. However, those same tired players then went on to score 17 goals in April with 3 stunning wins and a draw at Goodison. A second wind perhaps?

The bottom line is that the majority of the clubs who appear to be rotating their squads to a greater degree really aren’t giving the key players much time off as far as the league goes and the actual quality of rotation around the edges is questionable. I’m reminded of a (de)motivational poster I knocked up a while back when the 2007/08 Derby team started 33 different players in the Premiership on their way to setting the record low tally of just 11 points for the whole season. Of course I’m not suggesting that they were that bad because they had so many players, but I don’t think it really helped much.

We may well sit in the lower parts of the rotation table, but we’re at the right end of the only table that matters. I think MON has a good idea what he’s up to and I can’t wait to see where that takes us in 10 games time.