Premier League clubs 25 man squads

BaZ87

BaZ87

BaZ87

Don
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The other year the Premier League introduced a rule whereby clubs had to announce a 25 man squad at the end of each transfer window. Of the 25 named, a maximum of 17 could be non-home grown (home grown = players trained in the country for a minimum of 3 years prior to their 21st birthday) and players 21 or under didn't need to be registered.

It was reported that the main reason for this rule being introduced was to stop the top clubs from hoarding players. So who do you think were the only 4 clubs to take up their full allocation of 25 players? QPR, Stoke, Sunderland and Spurs :o

http://www.premierleague.com/page/Headlines/0,,12306~2440123,00.html

Has there ever been a more pointless rule? :/
 
The rule where the FA could fine clubs for not playing "their first 11" or whatever bull that was?

I don't really have a problem with the 25 man club rule.
 
Tummy said:
The rule where the FA could fine clubs for not playing "their first 11" or whatever bull that was?
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I found that to be total rubbish. Was it Wolves who famously got in trouble for it at some point? Absolutely ridiculous, you have your 25 man squad and you should be able to choose any players you like. So what if you pick a weakened team, perhaps there's a match a few days after the current one that you want to rest players for. :rolleyes:
 
I think it's more likely to be due to the lack of quality under-21 players at those clubs, as the bigger clubs tend to have more first team under-21s that aren't included as part of their 25 named players.
 
Wasn't the main reason of the rule to make sure you couldn't just buy a 25 man foreign squad, even though if you buy them all before 18 it wouldn't matter anyway? The whole idea was a joke to start with, "homegrown" is a joke, having to have English players(which is really what its about) is a joke, all of the good young players in the England setup were good before this daft rule and will be good after we get bored of the rule.


Either way, Arsenals squad looks relatively, awful, compare it to the team 6 years ago and I want to cry, RVP would get in our old squad, Verm, Arteta and Arshavin would but none would be first team, the rest, I don't think would even make the 25 man squad and certainly not close to first team.

Didn't realise, we've named 22 and only have 4 homegrown, Cesc/Bendtner would count as homegrown, we couldn't even name more senior non homegrown players if we wanted to :p

We would have had to buy homegrown players, or drop other guys like Squillaci/Almunia if we had bought any top players. Arsenal could actually have an issue there, though Frimpong, WIlshire, Ramsey will count as homegrown, but to buy outside of the EPL and top quality improvements means at this point, having to move other crap players on.
 
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Here's our squad from 6 years ago: http://www.mondaydata.com/arsenal/2005-2006.htm

Looking over that, I'd say you'd probably be able to fit Mertesacker in, aside from Campbell and Toure there aren't any monster centrehalves in there, Senderos/Cygan aren't quite up to his standard.

Chesney or Poom for 3rd choice keeper, could make a case for Chesney perhaps.
Also don't see why you wouldn't find a place for Jack Wilshere, with Edu having moved on there is surely a case for a left-footed CM in there, behind Flamini, Diaby and Gilberto what is there really in central midfield, surely you can't be advocating relying on a teenage Song ahead of Wilshere?! :eek:

Clearly the squad from 2005-6 is much stronger than the current one but I don't think you'd find anyone who thinks otherwise. Heck if you look at first team then the 1998 team is IMO far better than what we currently have.
 
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BaZ87 said:
players 21 or under didn't need to be registered
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For clarity, the rule doesn't actually translate as 21 or under; it is born in 1990 or later (which is why for example Spurs have to include Livermore in their 25 man squad despite the fact that he is only 21, as he was born in 1989).
 
Sorry yeah, Wilshire, I keep missing him because he's not in the 25, stupid young idiot :p

But even then, he'd be fighting Gilberto for DM and Cesc for AMC, in a 5 man midfield (if you had to of course, 4-5-1 sucks balls) Cesc/Wilshire with Gilberto would be awesome, hell he's still playing I think and he's only 33 I think, got a few years left, selling him was utter utter madness.

The issue isn't really how much better that squad is, its the massive difference in quality in some of those positions. Mertesacker, I have high hopes, same with Santos but we'll have to see how they do in this league. Santos doesn't yet strike me as a great player. A left winger, a left back for Brazil, who don't really care about defence(and have no world reknowned left backs either, just 15 left wingers), and you would feel if he was "that" good someone would have plucked him out of Fenebahce a long long time ago. Mertesacker, again a case of wanting to see how he plays in our team, our defence, and this league, could be great, could struggle a lot.

The really irksome thing is how stupidly the squad deteriorated, drop great players and play Hleb in a champs league final, 2 of our best players walked for that alone, and Hleb sucked balls. Flamini, Edu on free's, Gilberto for next to nothing because he promoted Song for no apparent reason, etc, etc. I mean if we had debt like Everton(non managed debt you can't pay off is entirely different to planned debt that you are EASILY making the payments on, not just the interest) I can understand our slide backwards, but 90% of our players lost, and buying crap players, was for entirely no reason just poor choices, which really is unforgivable.

I mean Gilberto was the best DM at the world cup, and the confed cup before that, and frankly Brazil looked a lot worse in central mid without him in the Copa America..... we let him leave because Denilson and Song were sooooo good..........
 
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Reason why England natiaonl team is crap

Very few English players that get the chance to make into the EPL and the ones that end up in the national team are ******* big time charlies and think they are world class!
 
Jokester said:
I think it's more likely to be due to the lack of quality under-21 players at those clubs, as the bigger clubs tend to have more first team under-21s that aren't included as part of their 25 named players.
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That's certainly true and is what makes the rule pointless.

With the amount of under-21's around now, no club needs 25 senior players and the very few clubs that do have that many won't use all of them. The make-up of squads hasn't changed because of this rule, it's just a rule for the sake of having a rule.

If they wanted to encourage the use of more young players then they should have made it a 20 man squad.
 
The irony was when this rule was first mooted some years ago some fans were quick to jump up and down saying "HAHHAHA LOL WENGER IS GUNNER BE SCREWED WITH HIS FRENCH TEAM LOLZ!!" but when you read the small print it became clear it would make no difference to Arsenal, if anything they were likely to handle it better than most due to their typical 'grooming' of young players for at least 3 years prior to 21.

Regarding the fines for playing a so-called 'weakened team' yes that rule was scrapped for this season, it was an absolute disgrace and if I was Mick McCarthy I'd be seriously considering lodging an appeal against his fine from last year, wasn't it him he had £20,000 stolen off him from the FA because his subjectively closen set of 11 players didn't exactly match the FAs subjectively chosen set of 11 players for some fixtures. I'm not even a fan of MM but I find it utterly abhorent that a club shouldn't be allowed to pick whatever team they see fit, by that logic surely we'd never see anyone making their debut unless there were injuries, we'd have teams playing with an average age of 35 because the FA decrees the 'big names' can't be left out.

Well I say the rule was scrapped actually I think they said as long as you picked players from your 25 man squad you would be fine, not 100% sure though. Which is still wrong IMO why restrict the development of young players since U21s are going to left out of that squad? Quick FA, better fine Wenger if he picks Wilshere and Ramsay ahead of Diaby when they are back from injury!
 
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