Sbragia is short of numbers and talent

Apr 7 2009 by Stuart Rayner, The Journal

RICKY Sbragia has admitted that for all Sunderland’s summer spending, the squad he has inherited is short on quality and quantity.

His predecessor Roy Keane spent in excess of £30m assembling a huge group of players which has been horribly exposed by the rigours of a Premier League campaign.

At its height this term, the first-team squad numbered 51. Yet when Sbragia sought to make changes for Saturday’s trip to West Ham United, he felt his hands were tied by a lack of options.

This was despite having only four first-teamers listed as injured – and two of them, David Connolly and Russell Anderson, effectively had their Stadium of Light careers written off long ago.

Still, Sbragia issued a damning indictment of the paucity of options available to him.

“I’d probably have made a few more changes if I’d had the personnel,” he said. “A few of them were away (with their countries) and a few of them were saying they were stiff and it’s a problem to us.

“We haven’t got the biggest of squads and we haven’t got a squad full of talent. We felt against West Ham that the 12 players who trained over the last two weeks would be the ones we started with.”