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WPM 2025/26 Squad Speculation, Confirmation and Mutual Termination

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Posted May 16, 2025 19:41 · last edited May 16, 2025 22:21

Bullion
martinb
What has made AFC strong is that no one apart from the captain and possibly May is a guaranteed starter. 

No one deserves minutes. 

We’ve seen Rogerson force his way in in pre-season, Mata in the mid-season and Gillion lose his place to Randall. After plenty of opportunities to improve. 

Competition for places made us strong before, made AFC strong this season and is what we want. We want our young pros to get limited minutes here and there while they are kept at bay by good performances from more senior teammates. 

First team minutes are not necessarily useful for development if they are not earned. 
again, we didn't start the season not wanting competition for places - hypothetically we could have had fully fit Marco, Cola, and Chico seeing out the end of the season. Imagine AFC's season if May, Moreno, and Rogerson only had combined 768 min of action (Marco, Cola, Chico and Ball) rather than the 5,098 minutes combined they have had on the pitch.
As I replied in the other thread- we quite clearly didn’t arrive with a team competing for places. The squad was a mess.

We had more minutes lost to injury in our title challenge season than this season.

We had CM players, but out of Retre, Nagasawa and Roa Conchie none were trusted to deputise Rufer. We ended up with Sheridan and LKH in midfield. This is not an injury problem. 

Moreno played about 1000 minutes out of almost 2,000. 

Chico played 5 games for 400 minutes. Then he got injured. Spot the difference?

There were very few players near their prime physically and in a football sense. 

However we were lucky to have our top scorer in Kosta, our top assister in Ishige or another top goal contributor in Tim Payne mostly injury free for the majority of the season. That’s the equivalent of May, Moreno and Rogerson right?

Because AFC’s team wasn’t so reliant on one player to create and one player to organise the defense that they’d fall to pieces if they were injured. 

Despite whatever intentions there were it was clear after several weeks that we were lacking players near their prime and that Chief didn’t trust large swathes of our squad.

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Unknown editor edited May 16, 2025 22:21
Bullion
martinb
What has made AFC strong is that no one apart from the captain and possibly May is a guaranteed starter. 

No one deserves minutes. 

We’ve seen Rogerson force his way in in pre-season, Mata in the mid-season and Gillion lose his place to Randall. After plenty of opportunities to improve. 

Competition for places made us strong before, made AFC strong this season and is what we want. We want our young pros to get limited minutes here and there while they are kept at bay by good performances from more senior teammates. 

First team minutes are not necessarily useful for development if they are not earned. 
again, we didn't start the season not wanting competition for places - hypothetically we could have had fully fit Marco, Cola, and Chico seeing out the end of the season. Imagine AFC's season if May, Moreno, and Rogerson only had combined 768 min of action (Marco, Cola, Chico and Ball) rather than the 5,098 minutes combined they have had on the pitch.
As I replied in the other thread- we quite clearly didn’t arrive with a team competing for places. The squad was a mess.

We had more minutes lost to injury in our title challenge season than this season.

We had CM players, but out of Retre, Nagasawa and Rosa Conchie none were trusted to deputise Rufer. We ended up with Sheridan and LKH in midfield. This is not an injury problem. 

Moreno played about 1000 minutes out of almost 2,000. 

Chico played 5 games for 400 minutes. Then he got injured. Spot the difference?

There were very few players near their prime physically and in a football sense. 

However we were lucky to have our top scorer in Kosta, our top assister in Ishige or another top goal contributor in Tim Payne mostly injury free for the majority of the season. That’s the equivalent of May, Moreno and Rogerson right?

Because AFC’s team wasn’t so reliant on one player to create and one player to organise the defense that they’d fall to pieces if they were injured. 

Despite whatever intentions there were it was clear after several weeks that we were lacking players near their prime and that Chief didn’t trust large swathes of our squad.