The Grove football blog

Plenty of Northern Ireland players secured important moves this summer with several moving up a level, or dropping levels on loan for game time. The list below covers players who have been called up to the senior squad or under 21s so will not include a lot of promising young players who have recently made moves across the water. As of the start of the 2025/26 season we have 4 players in the Premier League, the most for a long time. Conor Bradley has established himself as one of Liverpools’s right back options, but had had his opportunities hampered by niggling injuries. Trai Hume and Daniel Ballard achieved promotion with Sunderland and Justin Devenney broke into the Crystal Palace team at the back end of last season. Ballard scored in Sunderland’s opnening day win against West Ham and Devenney scored the decisive penalty in the Community Shield shoot-out against Liverpool. The bulk of the NI squad is likely to be made up from players in the A-B grades with C grade players often gett...

    Northern Ireland has 23 players out of contact this summer. The list below only includes players who have been called up to the national squad or the under 21 squad and are still active for Northern Ireland. The highest valued player according to transfermarkt.com is Jamal Lewis, rated at €3 million. He is still under contract with Newcastle until this summer. Several other international regulars including; Ciaron Brown, Josh Magennis and, Jordan Thompson are all out of contract this summer. Younger prospects such as Ethan Galbraith and Caolan Boyd-Munce are also due to be free agents this summer. Pierce Charles is arguably Northern Ireland’s first choice goalkeeper now, he is also out of contract this summer. This is perhaps the most surprising name on the list, Charles has recently become Sheffield Wednesday’s first choice having spent the season deputising for on loan (and highly rated) young goalkeeper, James Beadle. There is no doubt that Sheffield Wednesday intend...

League reconfiguration is a talking point that just doesn’t go away, and while many believe something needs to change to make Scottish football better, nobody can agree with a solution that actually is better.   There are a few barriers to league reconfiguration: 1.The SPFL wants to guarantee 4 Old Firm matches each season. They are by far the most viewed and contribute heavily to the tv deal. 2. Adding teams may add games, which means teams must keep larger squads on stretched budgets, it also potentially harms the chances of teams progressing further in Europe. 3. Having fewer games means a drop in match-day revenue which is vital for the teams not receiving European money. 4. Other structures can make the league less fair by having some teams play more games than others (eg. A14 team league with a 6-8 split), allowing some teams to have more home games than their rivals or, having a confusing multi-split system like Belgium.   In the absence of being able to find a...

  Larne’s European run is over, the Inver Reds managed one win in their 6 league phase games in their first attempt at European football. With the Conference league offering more opportunities for teams from smaller nations to play European football, I am sure this will not be the last time a local side gets to ply their trade in Europe. Every team that qualifies for the UEFA Conference League earns €3.17 million. A win in the group stage is worth €400K and a draw €133. Each team them receives a share of €18.65 million depending on where they finish in the league phase. Teams that finish in the top 8 get a further €400K while those in the top 16 get a further €200K. Teams are also awarded money from the ‘Value Pillar’. The amount a team will earn is worked out based on their coefficient ranking and the pool nation’s broadcasting money. Larne competed for the first time and so have a low coefficient and teams from Northern Ireland receive the least of all the Home Nations in broad...

With the close of the summer transfer window I thought I would update a piece I posted last year. I aim to show how deep the talent pool is for the Northern Ireland national team. To analyse our depth I have kept track of each player (hopefully not missing anyone) who has been called up to the senior or under 21s squads. I have organised them by general position eg. Defender, midfielder etc. rather than their specific positions, and organised them by their club and league. I have assigned each league a grade based on quality, this is subjective and after last year’s I have changed a few grades, notably moving the Irish Premiership, League of Ireland and Welsh Premier League up a tier and dropping Premier League 2 down a tier. I am sure there is still some debate about these but essentially we are focused on grades A-C as O’Neill rarely calls up any player playing below these league grades. The full list includes 137 players.  Following Jonny Evans’ retirement we only have one pla...