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"maybe Our Squad Isn't As Big As We Thought It Was".


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It is a gamble!....and it's just about working at the moment! Well 4th/5th place, a semi-final and last 16 in europe, is kinda working isn't it.

 

Loads of teams with bigger squads would love to be where we are at the moment.

 

surely one of the smallest squads in the prem and should finish no lower than 5th.

 

Don't expect loads of new players in the summer....Pienaar, Fernandes.....one more midfield player and that could be that.....maybe just maybe a right back.

 

A fully fit Vaughan (yes it can happen)....will be like a new player.

 

Gravo will go back to Celtic (unless he's free) and VDM will just go!

 

Next season will again be run with a small squad....and we will again do well!

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I'm backing craccer on this one because i let my thoughts be known in january.

He spent 2 million on Gosling and immediately said he was one for the future, then he sells Mcfadden for £5.5m and didnt replace him.

If he had brought in a decent player with that £7.5m we wouldnt have been forced to field a patched up side against Spurs and Blackburn (arteta suspended for 3 games and Osman with a broken toe having to play on the wing) and not sure if Pienaar was also injured after coming home from the african tourny.

 

Both those games ended 0-0, the 4 points were there for the taking and an opportunity was missed. We would now be 4 points ahead of Redshite, just 1 point behind Chelsea, and a massive 11 points ahead of Villa. He knew the squad was'nt big enough but did nothing about it, so there's no point in him moaning about it now cos he's only got himself to blame.

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The thing is with big 'quality' players is that when they're off form or injured, you need a squad to back you up for the long haul. Yak's been great to be sure - but he hasn't been great all the time. Cahill was brilliant, but has been off form.

 

I agree that 1 Yak is better than 3 Nugents, but I believe that 3 Pienaars would be better than 1 Yak.

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It's easy to say we need more players (and I agree, we do!), but the flip side of signing more players is that you can still only put 11 on the field, and unless they're Steve Sidwell, guys don't usually take a team's money for the privilege of sitting on the bench as a depth player. They want to play (as Stubbs and McFadden both echoed in their post-transfer comments), and the bigger the squad, the more of those egos have to be managed and the greater the risk of unhappy guys creating an unhappy locker room. You can sign 3 Pienaars over 1 Yak, but who's to say that 2 of those 3 Pienaars won't be demanding a transfer in a year because they aren't getting enough playing time? Then you're left with 1 Pienaar anyway and you still don't have a Yak!

 

Also, from a financial perspective, as your squad improves, it naturally becomes more expensive to bring in new transfers that will improve them even further (not to mention the increase in the wage bill!). It'd be nice to find a RB to challenge Neville, a DM to replace Cars sooner or later, maybe find a natural right winger to reinforce Arteta or even move him back to the middle, another striker who's less injury-prone than Vaughn, and so on, but how much would it cost us in transfers and wages to sign a raft of players who are actually good enough to make an impact, when guys like McFadden and Diomansy Kamara who couldn't or wouldn't make our bench when we're healthy, let alone the starting lineup, are commanding 5-6 million in the transfer market? Moyes is good at unearthing bargains like Pienaar and Lescott, but unless he can find half a dozen of them in one offseason, the going rates mean that asking for a massive injection of useful depth at this stage of our evolution is a pretty expensive order.

 

Now I'm not saying that we shouldn't try to add as much depth as we can. We do need to try our best to do just that. I'm simply pointing out that there are competing and sometimes impeding forces that come into play; it isn't as simple as saying, "We should sign five good players this offseason" and then making it happen.

Edited by JD in DC
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