For those of you who are unaware of the rule change, teams in the Premier League will be limited to a squad of f 25 players, with at least 8 ‘home grown’ players registered.
According to All About Football a ‘home-grown’ player is defined as someone who has spent three years between the ages of 16-21 registered at a club in England and Wales. Note that this the player does not have to be U21, they must have trained with an English or Welsh club for 3 years between the ages of 16 to 21.
So Steven Gerrard meets the definition of a home-grown player, Owen Hargreaves does not. This new rule is what is behind’s Liverpool’s signing of Charlton’s Jonjo Shelvey earlier this week.
The Arsenal-Mania web site had a list of the Arsenal squad in this format:
1. Bendtner
2. Clichy
3. Djourou
4. Gibbs
5. Traore
6. Song
7. Cesc
8. Walcott
————————————————————–
9. Sol
10. Senderos
11. Vela
12. Almunia
13. Van Persie
14. Fabianski
15. Sagna
16. Vermaelen
17. Gallas
18. Silvestre
19. Diaby
20. Rosicky
21. Nasri
22. Arshavin
23. Eboue
24. Eduardo
25. Denilson
At first glance Arsenal will be largely unaffected next season with their current squad of 30 holding 18 home grown players. Ramsey and Wilshere are not on the list and they will be able to take up two of the home-grown spots.
So what can Arsenal do this off-season? Adding Joe Hart instead of Almunia will help Arsenal as it replaces a “B” list player with an “A” list player. I would also expect to see Arsenal target some more British players over the next two seasons to supplement the younger players coming through the system.
Gallas and Silvestre are expected to leave this summer and that will allow Wenger to bring in two “B” list players. But for Wenger to bring in more than two players, somebody else on the “B” list has to leave.
{ 4 comments… read them below or add one }
From the 1st list i expect Traore will leave and replaced in the list by Mannone
From the 2nd list i expect, Campbell, Senderos, Almunia, Gallas, Silvestre, and Eduardo so hopefully that is 6 new signings
Gallas, Senderos and Silvestre will leave. I think there are no further negotiations on their new contracts. Wenger should try to get England based such as Joe Hart (he will not be Given understudy), Gary Cahill (Bolton will sell if meet the reasonable price) and Curtis Davies (fall in the pecking order behind Dunne, Collins and Cuellar). I don’t believe Wenger will sell any of his youngsters including Traore, Denilson and Vela. If there are some players who leave by transfer, they could be Eduardo, Rosicky and probably Arshavin. Based on what in Wenger’s mind, Almunia will definitely stay. But Fabianski or Mannone could leave on loan to make a space for 25 provisional squad, should Wenger get new goalkeeper.
Adding Hart, Cahill and Davies will really help with the new rules.
if we did get hart in that would be hitting two birds with one stone, improving our keeping situation too.
campbell will stay, so realistically we’ll have vermaelen, djourou and campbell from the current cb lineup. would expect to see kyle bartley added to the first team squad as well if we don’t loan him out.
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