Following on from Jonty's article on how the second half of the season is tougher due to less rest time compared to the first half and, how we seem to fall away due to a lack of squad depth compared to other clubs.
I decided to look at all the teams in the Championship, and how many players they have in their squads, and how many players have been used.
All teams have used between 23 to 26 players from their respective squads but some of these players have featured for literally a few minutes, and most if not all teams have a number of U23's making up these numbers.
So based on 200 minutes game time in 27 games so far as the benchmark for being a credible team member, l looked through all the teams and was surprised by the number of players used by other teams compared to us.
1 West Brom 18
2 Leeds 18
3 Brentford 16
4 Fulham 19
5 Forest 21
6 Sheff W 20
7 Swansea 20
8 Millwall 18
9 Bristol C 21
10 Preston 21
11 Hull City 20
12 Cardiff 22
13 Blackburn 19
14 Reading 21
15 QPR 19
16 Middlesbro 19
17 Derby 25
18 Birmingham 22
19 Charlton 24
20 Huddersfld 19
21 Stoke 24
22 Barnsley 21
23 Wigan 21
24 Luton 20
Leeds, like several of the teams at the top have a tight match day squad, but Brentford surprised me in so far as the number of players to feature is the lowest in the league, and they also have a core of only 14 players who feature more or less every game.
Many on here see them as one of the teams who will be pushing for automatic promotion, but with such a thin squad will they last the whole season injury free.
Same goes for Fulham, who with Mitrovic now ruled out for at least 3 weeks could they also see their promotion push dented.
Our last 6 games have seen our hopes dented somewhat, but with the return of Pablo and to a lesser extent Douglas, and with Shackleton and Roberts back to full training, we could be back to a strong squad again.
Lets just hope we can get a couple of quality new faces joining us before the end of the month, and I think we will be okay.
Squad size/Strength in depth
posted on 15/1/20
IF QSI were interested in us, and IF they bought us ...
I imagine them standing at the exit door with a big bag of money, handing it out to those players with a hearty
"You, Goodbye." "You, Goodbye." "You, Goodbye."
posted on 16/1/20
comment by Jonty (U4614)
posted 4 hours, 47 minutes ago
Algarve can confirm this but I would say we’ve got a couple there who’ve literally played 30 mins or less.
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Shackleton is the 18th player with 278 mins total. After that we have 5 players who have played less than 80 mins between them.
As I said at the start, the players included in all playing squads had to have played 200 mins or more.
posted on 16/1/20
I think that’s proving my point that a lot of young players get their debuts but actually play very few minutes.
posted on 16/1/20
We’ve got 6 games against the bottom 6, at home.
Maybe we should do some stats and see how we line up squad/depth wise against the struggling teams?
Lots of points up for grab there
posted on 16/1/20
Sky sports just did a large piece on Leeds and there tendancy to implode in the second half of the season. Andy Hinchcliffe reckons we are going up, although the stem of our problems is the bottling it mentality that we need to shift. He also reckons a new striker or a goalscorer is not what we need
posted on 16/1/20
I've said it I don't know how many times, there are 3 teams with more goals, and West Brom is one of them!..
We're scoring as many as all but one and that's a big reason why we're where we are in the table, if we swapped our defence for West Broms attack would we be any better off?..
posted on 16/1/20
Take eddies goals out and we’re 5th I think. That’s what we’re facing fir rest of season unless we get replacement.
posted on 16/1/20
Jonty, that doesn't work!..
I tried the old "take Becchio's goals away" and got my nuts kicked to death with the old, he doesn't bring enough to the team thing!..
Odd that, because where Becchio was scoring Bamford is bringing more to the team but getting the same crap!..
posted on 16/1/20
Why doesn’t it work? Which other striker would we have brought on to score those goals?
You keep going on about goals scored but it’s a snapshot in time and does not reflect the trend.
posted on 16/1/20
"I tried the old "take Becchio's goals away" and got my nuts kicked to death with the old, he doesn't bring enough to the team thing!.."
Sorry, must have written something wrong!..
Think you'll find if Becchio could have taken his goals with him that season we'd have been fighting or would have been relegated!..
I'm just pointing out that Bamford isn't scoring like Becchio did but he brings others into the game!..
Eddie might have scored a few, but if he'd replaced Bamford then you could take Bamford's goals away and be even further down the league!..