The 25-man squad rule has become an important aspect in ‘transfer planning’, and Spurs seem to be pretty adept at it.

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 (* = home grown player):

Hugo Lloris
Michel Vorm
Brad Friedel

Kyle Walker*
Danny Rose*
Kyle Naughton*

Younes Kaboul
Jan Vertonghen
Michael Dawson*
Vlad Chiriches
Zeki Fryers*

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

Aaron Lennon*
Erik Lamela
Andros Townsend*
Nacer Chadli

Emmanuel Adebayor
Roberto Soldado

That would mean that the following miss out:

Benoît Assou-Ekotto
Bongani Khumalo
Jonathan Obika*
Ryan Fredericks*
Cristian Ceballos

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
Ben Davies
Harry Kane
Eric Dier
Shaq Coulthirst
Kenny McEvoy (on loan at Peterborough)
Nabil Bentaleb
Grant Ward (on loan at Chicago Fire)
Rueben Lameiras
Soli Coulibaly
Tomislav Gomelt
Alex McQueen
Aaron McEneff
Dominic Ball
Luke McGee
Milos Veljkovic
Daniel Akindayini
Harry Winks
Connor Ogilvie
Nathan Oduwa
Emmanuel Sonupe
Filip Lesniak
William Miller

It’s worth nothing that Morgan Schneiderlin – our apparent number one target – counts as “homegrown” (according to the Premier League), as he joined Southampton just in the nick of time to meet the requirements.

Having nine homegrown players already in the squad gives us an element of flexibility. Also, I’ve included Carroll in the squad, when a loan seems likely for him.

We also have the bonus of the likes of Bentaleb, Veljkovic, Archer, Davies, Kane and Dier, who do not need to be named in the squad in order to be used.