Clyde1998ChameleonClyde1998 Based on the results and performances we've seen in pre-season, I do wonder if we could be a bit of a dark horse this season. I'm not suggesting we're going to get promoted, but the betting odds have us thirteenth. I've not been keeping much of a tab on the rest of the division so far, so it's possible a number of the sides have strengthened a lot in the summer.
The biggest weakness I think we have (at this stage) over the course of a season is depth, especially up front, on the wing and the full-back positions. As others have pointed out though, the strength of our academy relative to other League One sides is a major bonus and means we'll not have as much of a problem filling positions than without it, even if the players coming through aren't yet at League One standard.
Camara seems like he's having a good pre-season, which is good to see after his injuries last season and that Fleetwood game where he was taken off after about twenty minutes. Kanu seems to be getting a lot of game time, with Osho and Garcia battling for left-back (I'd guess Osho will be there for Birmingham).
The results and performances seem to be good, which is a good sign. That's especially the case with players like Bindon, Dorsett, Yiadom and Knibbs playing little to no role in pre-season with their injuries or being on international duty and with us mostly playing sides in the Championship.
I'd imagine the team that starts against Hull will be the starting XI against Birmingham, dependant on injuries and fitness. Thus far, it seems like a very productive pre-season and hopefully a good springboard going into the league season.
We easily have the highest variance if you play this season 1000 times - the team is so young and talented that it could be anywhere between bottom and top. The plus side is that we have an entire U21 squad that are almost L1 calibre, as well as a joined up vision from how the academy plays through to the first team to allow us to slot in academy players with ease (which Bowen, as much as people do not like him, deserves credit for). The big plusses for us is that our squad is so young so they should improve year on year, we're settled (when was the last time we will be able to start our best 10 players from the end of the year? (NA, TH, TMcI are all losses but realistically through incredible recruitment/luck Bindon/Mb aren't much of a downgrade at all)). Then you look at the players brought in - even the oldest of the first team in Wing has just turned 29, then you have a top L! striker in Smith, and Knobs who is tireless. Big season for Selles - he has an incredible stable of players (once again, we should credit Bowen, the academy team, and the facilities), and an entire offseason to bed in his philosophy. From mid-december onwards we'd've ended up in the playoff push if the season started then, so I think that's a realistic medium case scenario for us. Given that we'll get stronger through the year it could be a good one.
I agree with this and don't have much more to add, aside from on the point about when was the last time we kept as many of our best players from the previous season. It's a really good question. We've had a very long period having a lot of churn in the squad for various reasons.
I had to have a look at that, so I calculated the minutes retained for each season going back to the start of the 2011-12 season based on Experimental 361's pieces* - calculated as the total league minutes played in the previous season for players who were retained by the club at the end of the August window divided the total number of minutes of players in that season. Players who were loaned out for the whole season aren't counted as being retained. A player who plays every minute of every game would contribute about 9% by themselves. (If I've not worded that very well, someone please point it out.)
This season is the highest retained figure since 2017-18 going into 2018-19, where we only lost Joey van den Berg of our 14 players with the most minutes and only three players who played more than 1,000 minutes. We retained 82.8% that season; it's 79.4% going into this season - although that takes into account players we already lost in January (like Nelson Abbey and Caylan Vickers), which makes up about 40% of the total lost minutes. Of the other players we've lost, only really Mola Mukairu could be described as part of our strongest XI at the end of last season and both would be subject to debate.
The start of 2017-18 season is the next best (77.9%) since we were relegated from the Premier League, but we lost Al-Habsi and Williams; the start of 2020-21 and 2021-22 were relatively good (76.5%; 74.4%), but we lost Pele, Miazga, Gunter, Blackett and Baldock; and Richards, Olise, Semedo and Esteves respectively from our 1,000+ minute players.
Probably the most recent Premier League season (91.0% minutes retained) was the last time we didn't lose any of our best players going into the season. Only squad players were lost and were replaced.
For reference, the previous two seasons have seen us retain 48.1% and 34.0% of minutes respectively. At the end of last August's transfer window, we'd only retained five players who'd played more than 1,000 minutes in the previous term and that included Nesta Guinness-Walker and Tom McIntyre who hardly played last season before leaving the club in January (take those two out and it was 23.5%).
It's refreshing to go into a season with largely the same squad, and not being significantly weakened as a result, for a change.
*Experimental 361 comes up with a very slightly lower figure for this season than me for whatever reason. That could be down to them including stoppage time, as the figures I have don't include minutes played in stoppage time.
It's also nice to have a full squad of good players. How often have we been stuck keeping absolute duds on and having to recruit extra on top.
Not everyone in our squad is a top performer by any means, that's never going to be the case. But no one is rubbish and most of them are likely to improve as the season goes on.
We could be building an exciting Championship squad on the cheap here, thanks to our Academy.
