25-man squad update

At the beginning of August I wrote about how our 25-man squad is shaping up. After the sale of one ‘home grown’ player (Dawson), the loan of two others (Fredericks and Carroll) and the signing on a non-home grown player (Fazio), I thought I’d follow it up.

To summarise the rule again, we are able to name a 25-man squad if eight of the players are “home grown”. We could name fewer than eight home grown players, but would need to also name fewer than 25 players in our squad – e.g. if we only have seven home grown players, we can name a 24-man squad, 6/23, 5/22, etc. A home grown player is defined as follows:

… one who, irrespective of his nationality or age, has been registered with any club affiliated to the Football Association or the Welsh Football Association for a period, continuous or not, of three entire seasons or 36 months prior to his 21st birthday (or the end of the season during which he turns 21).

We do not need to name players who are under 21 on the squad list; for the 2014/15 campaign, players considered ‘under 21’ will have been born on or after 1st January 1993.

As it stands, our ‘named’ 25-man squad would probably consist of the following (* = home grown player):

Hugo Lloris
Michel Vorm
Brad Friedel

Kyle Walker*
Danny Rose*
Kyle Naughton*

Younes Kaboul
Jan Vertonghen
Federico Fazio
Vlad Chiriches
Zeki Fryers*

Sandro
Paulinho
Mousa Dembélé
Lewis Holtby
Étienne Capoue
Christian Eriksen
Ryan Mason*

Aaron Lennon*
Erik Lamela
Andros Townsend*
Nacer Chadli

Emmanuel Adebayor
Roberto Soldado
Jonathan Obika*

That would mean that the following miss out:

Benoît Assou-Ekotto
Bongani Khumalo
Cristian Ceballos

Also missing out would be the loan players:

Tom Carroll (on loan at Swansea)
Ryan Fredericks (on loan at Middlesbrough)

We are then able to select any players who were born after January 1993 without needing to register them. This means that any of the following (plus the 1st and 2nd year Academy scholars) would be available for selection:

Alex Pritchard (on loan at Brentford)
Jordan Archer (on loan at Northampton Town)
Ben Davies
Harry Kane
Eric Dier
Shaq Coulthirst (on loan at Southend United)
Kenny McEvoy (on loan at Peterborough United)
Nabil Bentaleb
Grant Ward (on loan at Chicago Fire)
Rueben Lameiras
Soli Coulibaly
Tomislav Gomelt (expected to join Bari, possibly on loan)
Alex McQueen
Aaron McEneff
Dominic Ball
Luke McGee
Milos Veljkovic
Daniel Akindayini
Harry Winks
Connor Ogilvie
Nathan Oduwa
Emmanuel Sonupe
Filip Lesniak
William Miller

Zeki Fryers is being linked with Crystal Palace and Jon Obika is being linked with various clubs as well – if either were to leave, we’d either have to not replace them, or to replace them with a homeg rown player. We could, however, sell a non-home grown player to make space for another non-home grown player. For example, with Lewis Holtby expected to move to HSV, we would free up space for another signing if necessary – Benjamin Stambouli, perhaps.

It’s easy to see why a move for Danny Welbeck may look attractive – we’re cutting it fine on home grown players if we want to name a 25-man squad. However, with a talented set of under 21 players (including Bentaleb, Dier, Kane and Davies) we don’t *have* to name the full 25.