The 500 club

Taking a quick look at mcfcstats.co.uk at the all-time appearance list, it got me wondering whether we will again see the 'one club' type of player that was seen in days of old - and in particular making 500 appearances for the club.

With the numerous Academy players that are now either established in, or on the fringes of the first team the possibility may be there for a couple of the players to do this, but it won't be an easy task.

To make 500 appearances - whilst not impossible for a player establishing themselves in the first team during their late teens or early twenties, you would have to average around 35 apearances consistently for 15 seasons - which is no mean feat.

The difficulty is that we all know in the modern game a player is not expected to remain with one club throughout their career which makes the task even harder, but is there anyone in the current squad who could realistically make 500 appearances?

Given their age and likely longevity of the City careers, there are perhaps just four current players with a realistic chance of achieving this:

Richard Dunne 230
Nicky Weaver 188
Sylvain Distin 175
Joey Barton 127

Perhaps Distin is a little bit of a long-shot given he would need to play well until his mid-thirties but all of the others have a good chance of doing it if the see out their careers at the club - and looking at Nicky Weaver, without his injury problems he would be well ahead of Richard Dunne in the current 'active' players list.

The current 500 club is as follows:

Alan Oakes 680
Joe Corrigan 603
Mike Doyle 570
Bert Trautmann 545
Frank Swift 511
Colin Bell 501
Eric Brook 500
Billy Meredith 500


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