Discover this Sunday Division Club With 1,800 Top-Flight Games
How do you enhance a excellent experienced team that have secured consecutive championships, featuring a double triumph boasting 30 victories from 32 matches?
Recruit a collection of ex- professionals who have competed at the highest tier of club football and international football as you target more silverware.
A Greater Manchester club fields an non-professional veterans team with 9 former top-flight players in their active squad.
Two Hundred Twenty-Two Top Division Scores, 325 Global Caps
Wythenshawe Vets Over 35s are located in south Manchester and play in the Cheshire Vets League Premier Division.
Their squad list this campaign includes 9 former Premier League players, with a combined 1,801 elite games.
This elite squad also boasts over 220 Premier League scores and over 320 global caps.
The squad include Papiss Cisse, who notched 37 goals in over 100 games for Newcastle United after joining them for nine million pounds from Bundesliga club Freiburg in 2012.
He had his debut for the team in their last home match against defending title holders their rivals and scored every one of the six scores in a six-two win - featuring a 32-minute first-half hat-trick.
Wythenshawe's roster for this season also features former professionals such as English and Liverpool forward Emile Heskey, Hull and Burnley winger George Boyd, Toffees forward Oumar Niasse, Wigan full-back Maynor Figueroa, Manchester City pair Stephen Ireland and Nedum Onuoha and top-flight championship victors Joleon Lescott and Danny Drinkwater.
In total, the former Premier League players have secured fifteen big trophies and transferred for total transfer fees of about £123m.
Household Names and International Stars
Ireland began playing for the side in preseason this season through close friend and current Wythenshawe player Blake Norton, and the ex- Irish player then asked additional former professionals, who all compete in a midweek small-sided game, to participate.
Ex- Senegal striker Oumar Niasse, who scored 12 goals in sixty-five Premier League matches for Everton and even now attends their matches at Goodison Park, also had his debut against the opposition - who are located in the city and wear an Blue warm-up gear as their uniform.
"A mate Stephen Ireland said 'join and play, it's good fun'," commented Niasse.
"After that he informed me we were facing a side from the city and the shock I had when I saw them sporting Everton shirts - I say this is strange for me!
"When you still love football and you know you can still do it, wherever you can kick a ball, what are you going to do?
"The fans who turn up and see are happy and to give someone's moment if they watch us competing there and to ask us queries - it's more like the joy of us having somewhere we can play, with organisation of course."
So great is the strength in depth at Wythenshawe, he made his debut at full-back.
"That's a little different but then, I love running and just move inside - I'm not staying back that much," he said.
"I warn my defender 'I'm not staying' and that I'm just going to continue attacking.
"That movement is what I'm looking for. It's good fun."
Unreal Feeling
Along with the forward's 6 goals on debut, Ireland has scored 8 in three appearances for Wythenshawe, while Boyd scored five on his debut appearance and Lescott, a defender by position, notched a hat-trick in one match up front.
The team are top of the Premier Tier with three wins from 3 and a goal difference of plus nineteen.
One opponent, thirty-eight, who features on the flank for the opposition, faced former Wigan defender Figueroa on Sunday - and had to explain his young son who Emile Heskey was.
He has played at 2 global tournaments for his country, in as well as playing in over two hundred Premier League games.
"It was spreading like a rumor they had all these former top-flight stars," said the player.
"I think I was a little awestruck playing against him to be honest.
"Even Heskey came on and he's has 60-odd England caps.
"We held our own for a solid 20 mins but then we had a man dismissed and it was hard.
"Our group literally have not stopped talking about it - I was phoning my mum and brother on the journey home.
"The opponents were all dead sound, shaking our hands after the match - it was like facing a bunch of regular fellas.
"Now we can't wait for the second match."
'We'll Still Take the League'
The manager manages the Collegiate veterans side, who won the Top Tier title the previous campaign, together with Paul Maguire.
"We scored 1-0 up and had a