retired_mekeesha

I used to be rather indisciplined and promiscuous - any triallist who fancied it was in - but now I've learned my lesson

But my benchmark is the wage budget. Currently managing East Stirling (still) my salaries started at £10 per week and have, 4 seasons in, crept up to £40-£100 per week - still low enough to have a sizable squad.

However I keep them on one year - or at most two-year contracts so that it is easy enough to prune the deadwood. If big clubs start expressing too much interest I'll slap a long contract on him, otherwise I assume they're damned grateful to be picking up a £10 part time wage off me

noveltysteph

I always have an eye at the club finances. So if there is no money or huge debts I reduce my squad to a minimum. I'm happy with about 22 to 30 players in the overall in the LL. I can't see the benefit to have another 20 players in the reserve team.

It's a bit different when I'm managing not at the bottom. It's more likely that you can loan out players, so I tend to have a total squad size of about 30 to 40, including reserve and youth teams.

I remember the first time I managed a Italian team with 56 youth players at the start. It took me some time to consider which one of them I should release and which not. As you can see, I don't trust my assistant manager very much.

retired_blondielovespink

At a lower division side I will typically keep 35 players total, 20-24 first teamers, depending on fixture congestion, the rest in reserves.

In my current game I took over Nantes and I can't tell you my squad size. I took over with at least 35 players in the Reserve side and another 2 dozen in the U18s. Most of the reserves were tied into 3 year contracts, so I could only transfer list the deadwood. The U18s who are scrubs get cut by the AMgr, but another dozen come to us every year anyway, so it doesn't go down. Plus I keep a squad of 23 players in the first team because I'm on tight fixtures all season long. That said, I don't lose 'too' much sleep over it because I'm still well below wage budget, though I don't know how.

Uknowmehfo

At Sestao I currently have about 27-28 players, though only 16 of them are up to the standard and/or show some promise.

The rest are utter crap, but they're the only ones that wanted to play for us so I had to sign them to up the numbers and give the regulars some rest.

retired_frogchickie

That's exactly what I do. I try and keep players on 1 or 2 year contracts unless they are obviously superstars.

retired_dfiegel

You get youngsters coming into your U18 team?! I've been at Bognor Regis for over 21 years and i don't think I've had 12 players come through in total, let alone one season! I dream of having an U18 team

retired_lizthibert

You want to be careful making statements like that!