Right, so we're all agreed that we need to add strength in depth to our squad? I personally thought, we would have needed to add 4-5 players who could challenge for our 23!

At the moment, we've lost 2 (Lehmann, Flamini) and gained (potentially) 4 (Pedro, Vela, Ramsey, Nasri), but of these, Nasri hasn't signed yet, Pedro will probably go out on loan again and Ramsey will either go out on loan or into the youth team!

So realistically, we have lost 2 and added 1, so if we needed 5 players at the start of the season, we now need 6! Get the finger out Monsieur!

That Van Persie bloke looked good. Perhaps we could sign him?!

You should see him on you tube!

[quote]That Van Persie bloke looked good. Perhaps we could sign him?[/quote]

I hear he plans to be injured by August, better not!

Isn't Pedro going on loan again next season? I doubt he qualifies as a 'special talent'.

[quote]Isn't Pedro going on loan again next season? I doubt he qualifies as a 'special talent'.[/quote]

That's what I said in my original post! The only players there worth talking about for this season imo are Vela and Nasri, who hasn't signed!

Ramsey will feature next season IMO

I guess that Randall, Barazite, Fran, Gibbs, Lansbury, etc. will all be in the Carling Cup team and maybe on the fringe of the first team, although some may get loaned again.

With the addition of Nasri and I reckon Djourou will be at the club all season rather than being loaned out, I now feel that we need 4 more players, keep them coming...there's a league to win out there!

4?

ridiculous

2 (max and min)

[quote]4?

ridiculous

2 (max and min)[/quote]

It's not ridiculous if we want to win the league, we need 4 more to challenge for our first 16!

Fix the broken ones and we're halfway there

Does anyone know how many squad players MANCS and Chelsea have? I'm not sure, but I remember counting about 35 for both last season. We are well short of that.

No surprise we run out of steam in March!

[quote]Does anyone know how many squad players MANCS and Chelsea have? I'm not sure, but I remember counting about 35 for both last season. We are well short of that.

No surprise we run out of steam in March![/quote]

Chelsea had a squad of about 23, remember thats all Mourinho wanted. Manu had lots of midfielders but that was it, they were short everywhere else but had no major injuries so were not tested.

Looking at the stats from the Premier league only.

22 outfield players appeared for Chelsea last season, 19 for Man Utd and 20 for us.
I don't think it was the numbers in the squad that let us down last year, more the quality of some of the squad players.

With the losses of Eduardo, RVP and Rosicky, for much of the season we nearly always had a couple (if not more) of our squad players in the first team.

If you look at those players in our squad who played less than 1500 minutes of football.
We had Rosicky, Walcott, Djourou, Senderos, Gilberto, Van Persie, Eduardo, Bendtner, Diaby, Denilson and Song. I would say that at least 2 of these would be in our first choice line up and certainly another 3 would be on the bench to change games.
Of Man Utds squad these players played less than 1500 minutes. Anderson, O'Shea, Saha, Park, Fletcher, Pique. Of which none would be making it into the first team. Possibly 1-2 on the bench.

What we need to do is keep our players fit and improve the quality of the squad.