all those trying to predict the team, forget the players for a few minutes and try and get you head round the 'new philosophy'. Part of the whole sustainability, FFP bollocks and bringing in of the Barca crowd is to move to a 6/5 set-up - or the 'Barca model' as its known in the circles that talk about this kind of stuff.
6/5 ??
This is simply, 6 world class big money singings, and 5 home grown talents.
Expect future transfer activity (or lack of) to be moving towards this model, a lot sooner than you might expect. Now i think you could argue, and win, that we down have the young talent in our academy to step in now and make this work.
We have Hart and Richards, and then on the fringes there is Guidetti, Razzak, Rekik, Saurez etc. but of the fringe players nothing is really solid yet. A lot in the next graduation group but nothing to step in for 2013.
In the team who are your 6 players?? Kompany, Yaya, Aguero, Silva are probably your dead on certs, then the other two, Tevez, Zabba, Clichy, Nastasic, Mario, Dzeko, Nasri
and then there appears to be scant room for Lescot, Kolo, Barry, Milner, Kolarov, Maicon, Rodwell, Sinclair and co.
I wouldnt expect a massive clearout but dont be surprised if a lot of the players in the last group leave in the summer. Especially those the wrong side of 30. We cant have the 6/5 functioning for 2013/14 but they will want to have it as a working model sooner rather than later.
quick edit, i'm not saying i think this is the right way forward or that it will work, just that i think it might (will) happen.