Howard Mucha
Coleman Hibbert Jags Heitinga Duffy Distin Baines Oveido
Neville Gibson Osman Hitz Barkley Fellaini Naismith Pienaar Mirallas
Jelavic Vic
Some other youngsters been around the bench: Stones Jnr Kennedy Vellios
Is it really a small squad?? Or is it more a case of small on quality outside the first 11??
I'd say the latter... I think for us with no Europe 22/23 first team players is fine as long as the quality is there in the second 11.
Letting 4 go from above for example and bringing in 4/5 as long as they were quality players would see us in a stronger posistion with a lot more options.
I agree that the problem is the weakness in terms of quality depth ie there's no-one outside the starting XI who is really pushing for inclusion as yet. Having said that, there are always exceptions: Barkley looks like he will make the transition sooner rather than later, and I don't think there's much between Howard and Mucha. It's simply too soon to say with regard to Stones, Duffy, Oviedo, Kennedy and Vellios.
However, you have to consider the impact of age. Neville is already finished due to age; Osman is at an age where he can't realistically make 40 appearances in a season without tailing off dramatically; Hibbert is in the same position as Osman; Pienaar is also arguably at that stage too; Distin, despite all evidence to the contrary, cannot go on forever and Hitz is only going to get worse now too. THESE are the players that need to be upgraded, because they will very possibly be done in terms of useful contribution within the next two seasons. I'd like to see the squad improve in quality AND depth so that a serious attempt at European qualification takes place - currently, a decent Cup run stretches the squad too far!
If all that happens is Felli gets sold for a hypothetical £30m, and a combined £20m is immediately spent on Negredo (£12m) and Remy (£8m), then simple maths says there's £10m left IF you're happy to leave the debt untouched. And that's asumming Negredo and Remy are available at the lower end of the estimates of their current prices. The Fer deal was supposedly for a fee of £8.6m, so resurrecting that leaves £1.4m to upgrade the aging midfield (as Fer would simply be a like-for-like Felli replacement) - that rules out Honda, McCarthy, Capoue, De Guzman, Rakitic or anyone else that would command a transfer fee. In fact, it would probably rule out a lot of top-tier free transfers. Even if you DON'T go back for Fer you only have £10m to play with - presuming nothing is put toward paying off debt.
What if a suitable buyer for Felli DOESN'T come forward? We still need to upgrade/increase numbers, for the reasons listed above. So in either instance, I think looking at free transfers EARLY, and making aggressive bids for players with a year or so left on their current contracts is a better route than spunking £20m+ on one or possibly two strikers.
