Squad

I still don't get your point, a squad of 21 senior players if balanced is 2 for every position except a keeper. So with three injuries at any given time you would have a match day squad of 18. If you had more injuries than this surely the younger players make up the squad. If they are not capable of being in the 18 why are they here?

Or are we saying Dembele, Killip, Cardwell, DJ, Clifton etc. are incapable of playing at league 2 level, even at a squad level so they don't count?

I'd much rather have lower numbers and higher quality, supported by a small number of young pros who could if necessary slot in.

The point about the young players is I seriously doubt any of them are on anything like big wages, even the slightly older ones like Cardwell, Kilip and Dembele because they've never played a single game in the football league before joining us. So removing them from the squad wouldn't really make much difference to the wage bill so the difference in quality elsewhere would be minimal.

Coupled with the fact that we now can't loan anyone in should be we get unlucky with injuries. Football management is results driven and managers are generally cautious. I doubt many are willing to risk bad luck with injuries leaving them with the prospect of having no choice but to play youth players for a long period of time so quite a few of them seem to have bigger squads than previous seasons. Like I've already said, we're not some sort of anomaly. There are plenty of teams in our division that have bigger or similar sized squads.

Even if you want to just focus on the actual youth players as opposed to youngish players that aren't established pro's, there are 5 in our squad who are 18 or younger so that leaves another 25 players. 3 of those 25 are long term absentees so realistically you're looking at a current squad of 22 propped up by youth players which is basically what you keep saying you'd want.

I think we just fundermentaly disagree on this you say the numbers aren't unusual and are there or there abouts what I say.

I say 30 doesn't equal the 25/6 that I think is about the right size and that the numbers are unusual. It's ok we can agree to disagree, there are benefits and risks to both approaches to squad building 😉

Separately i think the balance exasperates the issue given that we released five defensive players and only signed three, we look even more lopsided than we did last year, in a completely different way which is odd. It's almost like the management tried to over compensate for our deficiencies.

It'll be an interesting season forsure.

I often think the strength of any squad can be measured by the quality on the bench.

Assuming we keep the same starting eleven as Saturday we potentially could have Killip, Davies, Collins, Jones Clements, DJ & Matt in the dugout which, for League 2, is pretty good IMO.

Good point, although you could also argue that we have some decent/good players throughout the squad but lack two or three of high quality at this level. Bit early to tell of course.

I saw on Twitter today that Jamey Osborne is now doing gym work and expects to be fit before November, this was from the man himself. This can only be good news.

And there are 3 more on trial for the ressies game this week.

Quoted from Mariner_09

I saw on Twitter today that Jamey Osborne is now doing gym work and expects to be fit before November, this was from the man himself. This can only be good news.

That's great news and and possibly a much earlier return than first thought.

In contrast, Lincoln are panicking like hell as they only have a squad of 19 of which three are keepers and a few are on loan until Jan.

I know what I would prefer

Quoted from 120790

In contrast, Lincoln are panicking like hell as they only have a squad of 19 of which three are keepers and a few are on loan until Jan.

I know what I would prefer

That's staggering given the amount of money they must have sloshing about.