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How do you improve a stellar veteran squad who have won back-to-back titles, featuring a league-cup double with 30 victories from thirty-two matches?

Sign a raft of former professionals that have performed at the top level of club football and international football as you aim for more trophies.

A Greater Manchester club boasts an amateur veterans team with 9 former Premier League footballers in their active lineup.

Two Hundred Twenty-Two Premier League Goals, 325 International Appearances

Wythenshawe Vets Over-35s are based in southern Manchester and compete in the Cheshire-based Veterans League Premier Division.

The lineup this campaign includes nine former top-flight players, with a collective nearly 1,800 top-flight matches.

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

The squad include Papiss Cisse, who netted 37 scores in over 100 games for his former club after signing for them for nine million pounds from Bundesliga club SC Freiburg in 2012.

He made his first appearance for the team in their last home-field match against defending title holders their rivals and netted all six goals in a 6-2 win - featuring a 32-minute opening period hat-trick.

The squad for this season also includes former professionals such as England and Anfield forward Emile Heskey, Hull City and Burnley winger George Boyd, Everton striker Oumar Niasse, Wigan Athletic full-back Maynor Figueroa, Manchester City pair Stephen Ireland and Nedum Onuoha and top-flight championship winners Joleon Lescott and Danny Drinkwater.

Collectively, the former Premier League footballers have won fifteen big trophies and moved for total transfer fees of around £123 million.

Famous Names and Global Stars

Stephen Ireland began turning out for the team in pre-season this season through close friend and current Wythenshawe player Blake Norton, and the ex- Republic of Ireland midfielder then asked other former professionals, who all compete in a weekly nine-a-side match, to participate.

Former Senegalese striker Niasse, who scored twelve goals in 65 Premier League matches for the Toffees and still attends their home games, also made his first appearance against the opposition - who are located in the city and use an Everton training kit as their strip.

"My friend Stephen told me 'come and have a game, it's a laugh'," said Niasse.

"Then he told me we were facing a side from the city and the surprise I had when I noticed them sporting Everton shirts - I thought this is strange for me!

"When you still enjoy football and you know you can still do it, wherever you can kick a ball, what are you going to choose?

"The people who come and see are pleased and to make someone's moment if they watch us playing there and to ask us queries - it's more like the joy of us getting somewhere we can enjoy football, with organisation of course."

So great is the squad depth at the club, he had his debut at full-back.

"That's a bit different but then, I enjoy running and just move inside - I'm not staying back that much," he added.

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

"The movement is what I'm looking for. It's enjoyable."

Unreal Scenario

Along with Cisse's 6 scores on his first game, Stephen Ireland has netted 8 in 3 games for Wythenshawe, while Boyd scored 5 on his first match and Lescott, a defender by position, notched a hat-trick in one game as a striker.

Wythenshawe are leading of the Top Tier with three victories from three and a goal difference of +19.

One opponent, thirty-eight, who plays on the flank for the opposition, came up against former Latics defender Maynor Figueroa on the weekend - and had to tell his nine-year-old boy who Heskey was.

Figueroa has appeared at 2 World Cups for Honduras, in as well as playing in over 200 Premier League matches.

"The news was going round like a rumor they had these former top-flight stars," said Barrow.

"I felt I was a bit awestruck facing Figueroa to be honest.

"Also Heskey got on and he's has over 60 English appearances.

"Our side held our own for a solid 20 mins but then we had a player dismissed and it was tough.

"We literally have not stopped chatting about it - I was calling my mother and brother on the way home.

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

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

'We'll Still Take the League'

The manager manages the Collegiate veterans team, who secured the Premier Tier championship the previous campaign, along with his co-manager.

"Our team went one-nil up and had a