Our Squad

[Rjk]

Here is as far as I can work out where our squad currently stands, roughly by position, with age and years left on contract also shown.
Where players can play in more than one position I've only shown them once.

And there are quite a few other youngsters on the fringes as well, but I couldn't fit them all in.

squad 5.jpg

what do you think? Id say t probably looks a bit more balanced than in previous seasons.

[City123]

Isn't Brown in the last year of his contract?

[Rjk]

Isn't Brown in the last year of his contract?

ah yeah I thought that was the case, but I wasn't sure

[City123]

ah yeah I thought that was the case, but I wasn't sure

What the current situation with contracts does whereby we could implement a change in the overall makeup of the squad fairly quickly. We could lose a lot of big names (and big earners) in the summer

[Rjk]

What the current situation with contracts does whereby we could implement a change in the overall makeup of the squad fairly quickly. We could lose a lot of big names (and big earners) in the summer

yes, if the youngsters on the fringes of the team really take their opportunity then it could be a much easier job next summer, in terms of the number of players to bring in and the wages as well

[Rjk]

Worth noting that the average age of the squad shown there is 25.9
That shows some very good progress has been made - in the 2019/20 season we had one of the oldest squads around.
9 times that season we fielded a side with an average age of 29 or more.
Some of the youngest sides fielded in the last few seasons have been the likes of Barnsley and Brentford. Barnsley in particular. They had a tough couple of seasons where they were a bit of a pushover at times, but they seem to be reaping the benefit of it now.

[surge]

I'd rank Mick and TC over Harris and David Livermore and Warnock and Kevin Blackwell in terms of who will be best at bringing young players through.

For this reason I'm probably more excited than most about next two years but, as we seem to have done bringing McGuinness in to replace Flint and Wintle in to replace Pack, we'll need to start thinking about whether Mick's team are right longer term or who replaces them before their contracts runs down. But I'm looking 18 months into the future there.

We've recruited well enough since Harris came in really but the next immediate challenge off the field will be which players we extend - think my previous sentence probably gives away some of my feelings on that - and while Brentford rarely extend a player's contract once they've reached 30 I can't see us going to that extreme so we'll need to be more careful about which older players we keep on.