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How do you improve a excellent experienced squad that have won back-to-back championships, featuring a league-cup double boasting 30 victories from 32 matches?

Recruit a collection of former professionals who have played at the highest level of club football and global football as you aim for further honors.

One Greater Manchester side has an amateur vets team with nine ex- top-flight footballers in their active roster.

Two Hundred Twenty-Two Top Division Scores, 325 International Appearances

The team Veterans Over-35s are based in southern Manchester and compete in the Cheshire-based Veterans League Top Division.

The roster this campaign includes nine ex- top-flight players, with a collective 1,801 elite games.

The elite squad also includes 222 top division goals and over 320 international appearances.

The squad include one forward, who notched 37 scores in 117 games for his former club after joining them for nine million pounds from Bundesliga side Freiburg in 2012.

He made his debut for Wythenshawe in their most recent home-field match versus reigning champions Collegiate Old Boys and netted all six goals in a six-two win - including a half-hour opening period hat-trick.

The squad for this season also includes ex- pros such as England and Liverpool forward Emile Heskey, Hull and Burnley midfielder George Boyd, Toffees forward Oumar Niasse, Wigan Athletic defender Maynor Figueroa, Manchester City pair Stephen Ireland and Nedum Onuoha and top-flight championship victors Joleon Lescott and Danny Drinkwater.

Collectively, the ex- Premier League footballers have claimed fifteen big trophies and moved for total transfer sums of around £123m.

Household Names and International Stars

Stephen Ireland began turning out for the side in pre-season this summer through close friend and current team teammate Blake Norton, and the ex- Irish player then asked other former professionals, who all compete in a weekly small-sided game, to join in.

Former Senegal striker Oumar Niasse, who scored twelve goals in 65 Premier League games for Everton and still attends their matches at Goodison Park, also made his debut versus the opposition - who are located in Liverpool and wear an Everton training kit as their strip.

"A mate Stephen Ireland told me 'join and have a game, it's a laugh'," said Niasse.

"Then he informed me we were playing a team from the city and the surprise I had when I saw them wearing Blue kits - I thought this is strange for me!

"If you still love the game and you know you can still play, anywhere you can play, what are you going to choose?

"The spectators who come and see are happy and to make someone's moment if they watch us competing there and to ask us questions - it's really about the joy of us having somewhere we can enjoy football, with organisation of course."

Such is the bench strength at the club, he made his first game at defender.

"That's a little unusual but then, I enjoy running and just go forward - I'm not staying back that much," he added.

"I warn my defender 'I'm not hanging back' and that I'm just going to keep running.

"The running is what I'm after. It's good fun."

Dreamlike' Experience

Along with Cisse's six goals on his first game, Stephen Ireland has scored eight in three appearances for the side, while Boyd scored five on his debut match and Joleon Lescott, a centre-half by trade, notched a hat-trick in one match up front.

The team are leading of the Premier Tier with 3 victories from three and a goal difference of +19.

Paul Barrow, 38, who plays on the flank for the opposition, came up against former Wigan full-back Figueroa on the weekend - and had to tell his nine-year-old boy who Heskey was.

Figueroa has appeared at two global tournaments for Honduras, in as well as featuring in more than two hundred top-flight matches.

"The news was going round like wildfire they had these former top-flight players," remarked the player.

"I think I was a little starstruck facing Figueroa to be honest.

"Also Emile [Heskey] got on and he's got 60-odd English appearances.

"Our side held our own for a solid 20 minutes but then we had a man dismissed and it was hard.

"We literally haven't ceased chatting about it - I was phoning my mother and brother on the journey home.

"They were all dead sound, shaking our hands after the match - it was like facing a group of normal fellas.

"Now we can't wait for the second match."

'We'll Still Win the Title'

The manager manages the opposition vets team, who secured the Top Division title last season, together with Paul Maguire.

"Our team scored 1-0 ahead and had a