I am becoming more and more enamoured of squad numbers; without them, I wouldn’t stand a chance of identifying all the new arrivals at Birmingham City. So for me, the announcement of squad numbers this week was more exciting than the revealing of new kits. My only preferences on kit design are that I don’t like pink (I heard some of our players didn’t like it either when they played in pink at Millwall, in October 2012), I hate having sponsors names on tops and I wish the squad numbers on the shorts were bigger so my old eyes could read them when players are on the other side of the pitch.

There are 28 players on the full squad list announced this week and 24 of them went to pre-season training in Ireland. The 4 that didn’t go to Ireland were:

• Nick Townsend, goalie, who has sat on the bench but hasn’t made his first-team debut yet.
• Charlee Adams, who was given a squad number in January 2014, played a few minutes at the end of the cup tie with Bristol Rovers and then sent out on loan to Lincoln City.
• Amari’i Bell, who is on a youth loan to Mansfield Town at present.
• Matt Green, who is recovering from injury.

Koby Arthur ‘s name doesn’t appear on the squad list but his profile is still on the club site. In a recent interview in which Lee Clark said he was looking for a player to bring in, he said, “But we have obviously got Demarai Gray and Koby Arthur, too, so there could be an opportunity for those boys to show what they can do.” So it could be that the decision on whether to include Koby in the squad or send him out on loan again depends on whether or not Clark gets another player in.

So here’s my list of 29 players arranged roughly in order of how long they have been at the club or, with ex Academy players, when they made their first team-debuts. Only two of them played for us before 2012.