Last season:
Pepe
Johno Carra Agger Aurelio
Lucas Raul
Kuyt Stevie Maxi
Torres
Bench - Jones, Kelly, Skrtel, Spearo, Cole, Babel, Ngog
This season:
Pepe
Johno Carra Agger Enrique
Lucas Adam
Kuyt Stevie Downing
Suarez
Bench - Doni, Kelly, Skrtel, Henderson, Spearo, Bellamy, Carrol
These are in my opinion, our best match day squads for last season and this season. Looking only at the starting 11 I'd say there is very little between the two teams. However, the difference is that we now have quality coming off the bench. Who could we have called on to come off the bench and change a game for us last season
Cole, Babel, and Ngog?! Babel was a decent supersub at times, but was unconvincing too often!!
This season we can call on the likes of Hendo, Bellamy (a very shrewd signing in my opinion) and Carrol to come on and change a game. We can even line Carrol up as the starting CF and bring Suarez on after 60 mins and let him have a field day with the oppositions defenders!!
I have to say that overall we have done well this summer to fill our squad with quality players while also reducing the average age. However, our biggest achievement may have been how significantly we managed to trim the wage bill!!
I think many of us (myself included) were hoping that we would grab one marquee player, but I think that the moves we made this summer were well protracted and should serve the purpose of getting us back into the top 4 for next year. Hopefully next summer we will see the addition of a marquee player or two!!
Oh, and we should make a cheeky bid for Affelay this January...... We'll see if he has gotten sick of getting splinters in his arse by then and wants to actually play some footie to try to get into the Holland squad for the Euro's!!