Following on from yesterdays blog where we touched on the state of Arsenal’s squad, I had a few requests to write my yearly “State of the squad” blog. So here it is.
We have a 33 man squad right now which is clearly too many – even with Europa League football.
Of the 33, 6 are Under 21 – which for this year is born on or after 1st January 2001. Those 6 are:
Arthur Okonkwo, William Saliba, Bukayo Saka, Gabriel Martinlli, Folarin Balogun and Marquinhos.
That leaves 27 players – which is 2 too many for Premier League registration rules.
From the remaining 27, 19 are non-home grown. We can only register 17.
So just to bring us into line with Premier League rules, 2 will have to go. But logistically it will be much more than that.
The 6 U21 players would mean that we could have a bigger senior squad without breaching Premier League rules if only 2 non-home grown players depart. But that would still leave Mikel Arteta with a 31-man squad.
Last season Arteta had a 21-man squad (with a couple of extra youth players taking spots on the bench) by the time the season ended.
I expect his senior training squad to be cut down to around 27 by the time the transfer window shuts at the end of August.
That will be at least 6 players leaving – either on loan or sold.
Enjoy your Wednesday.
Keenos
She Wore A Yellow Ribbon 
Soooo … keep all Homegrown and U21 Players leaving us with a fairly short list of players that can pack their bags … one goalie, Pablo Mari, Lucas Torreira (I’d prefer to keep him but he wants out), Nicolas Pepe. Only caveat being that IF any of the current allegations about incidents in Ibiza are proved and the player is an Arsenal player he can f*ck right off.
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