Antonio Valencia has joined Wythenshawe Vets, adding another high-profile name to a squad built around former top-flight experience. The veteran side competes in the Cheshire Vets League Premier Division, a competition for players over 35, and were top of the table on arrival after winning each of their first seven games with a goal difference of +54.<\/p>\n
Wythenshawe welcomed Valencia as a contributor to the club environment. \u201cAs a community club with over 80 teams across men\u2019s, women\u2019s and junior football, it\u2019s always great for our players, volunteers and fans to see a player who has competed at the very top level spending time around the club and being part of the environment we\u2019re continuing to build,\u201d Wythenshawe told BBC Sport .<\/p>\n
Valencia, a winger-turned-defender, made 325 Premier League appearances during spells with United and Wigan Athletic. He joins a dressing room that includes a number of players with even greater top-flight experience. Emile Heskey leads the appearance list with 516 Premier League outings, 110 goals and 62 caps for England.<\/p>\n
Also on the books are Marc Albrighton with 310 appearances and Joleon Lescott with 288. Stephen Ireland (245) and Erik Pieters (225) contribute further midfield and defensive experience. Former Wigan defender Maynor Figueroa (214) is part of the squad alongside forwards Papiss Ciss\u00e9 (117) and Oumar Niasse (65).<\/p>\n
Other contributors include Cameron Jerome (211), Nedum Onuoha (188), Danny Drinkwater (104), George Boyd (101), Paul McShane (98), Jefferson Montero (66) and Michael Mancienne (50). The collection of former professionals has helped drive the team\u2019s dominant start and explains the depth of experience visible on Wythenshawe\u2019s official squad list.<\/p>\n
For Wythenshawe Vets, the mix of veteran pros and community football appears to be producing results on the pitch and increased interest off it. Valencia\u2019s arrival reinforces the club\u2019s reputation for attracting recognizable names and for assembling a team capable of sustaining an exceptional opening run in the Cheshire Vets League Premier Division.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Antonio Valencia has joined Wythenshawe Vets, a veteran side currently leading Cheshire Vets League .<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":10947,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1083,969],"tags":[1162,1484],"class_list":["post-10948","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-man-utd","category-premier-league","tag-analytics","tag-appearance-record"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10948","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10948"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10948\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/10947"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10948"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10948"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10948"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}