The Squad Right Now

Goalkeepers

• Joe Murphy
• Lee Burge

Defenders

• Blair Adams – LB
• Cyrus Christie – RB
• Jordan Wilils – CB/RB

Midfielders

• Carl Baker – RM/AM
• Adam Barton – DM/RM/AM
• Billy Daniels – MC/ST
• John Fleck – AM/DM
• Franck Moussa – AM
• Conor Thomas – MC

Strikers

• Leon Clarke – ST
• Callum Wilson – ST/RM

Youth/Back-Up Players

• Leon Lobjoit – RM/RB?
• Louis Garner – RM
• Lewis Rankin – LM/LB?
• Aaron Phillips – RB

This is the squad as we know it right now. Gone are the departed five, the forgotten four and the Expendable Eight.

So it leaves us with suddenly a very threadbare looking squad. To be honest, we could do with reinforcements in every position aside from goalkeeper and attacking midfielders. What worries me most is the lack of central defenders in the squad. Yes Jordan Willis is talented but we know nothing about whether he can handle being a first-team regular, which he may or may not become.

To me it still feels like an act of folly making many of those eight expendable. The decisions to put William Edjenguele and Steven Jennings on the list are perhaps the most indefensible. Perhaps with our restricted budget next season this is the type of tough decisions needed to be made. With squad numbers so low and the transfer embargo still above us I anticipate that we haven’t seen the last of some of those expendables.

Additionally I think that making publicly known who you no longer want and to make them train away from the first-team is counter productive and not conducive to actually selling them. I remember how Derby transfer-listed James Bailey last season and still haven’t sold him. Peterborough constantly transfer list players, such as Grant McCann Tyrone Barnett and Emile Sinclair who are still at the club. When Preston bought a new team last season they placed virtually their entire team on the transfer list and had to pay off quite a few of them.

Although we clearly have budgetary constraints right now, the tactic of publicly transfer-listing players seems out of date with modern football. The first thing that should have been done was to offer shorter term contracts in order to prevent this situation occurring of having a large amount of unwanted players on the payroll. The other option is to work with the existing set of players and to try to coach out their weaknesses. I presume that since this option isn’t being taken it is due to the constraints of financial fair-play and hopefully isn’t just sheer bloody-mindedness from Pressley over his style of football.