The international transfer window is now open! And also overnight, all players with expiring contract have are now officially free agents.
So we decided today would be a good day to release our annual “Arsenal – State of the Squad” analysis.
What we always try and do in this yearly reviews is see exactly where the squad is ahead of the new season, taking into account home grown requirements to register players.
Normal rules apply:
• Clubs can register up to 25 senior players in their A list
• Of which no more than 17 can be “non-home grown (NHG)”
• To be considered home grown (HG), a player must have been registered to an English (or Welsh) clubs for 3 entire seasons before the season he turns 22
• Players born before 01/01/2002 do not need to be registered in the A list
The current squad list does not make for pretty reading in terms of numbers:
As it stands, we have 21 NHG players. That is 4 too many.
We need to see 5 players exit over this window to enable us to register Jurrien Timber without worry. If we are unable to facilitate loans or transfers out, the result will be players left unregistered.
So who is on the chopping board? The 5 obvious names are:
Rúnar Alex Rúnarsson
Cédric Soares
Auston Trusty
Granit Xhaka
Nicolas Pépé
But I expect more to also depart including:
Nuno Tavares
Albert Sambi Lokonga
Those 7 exits would take us down to 14 NHG players. Enough space to then recruit a further 4 NHG if we chose.
But we have to remember that HG players must also be registered As it stands we have 11 HG players that would require registering.
If your thought now is “14+11 is 24, that’s alright, it is 25” then you are right, but also wrong.
You are right in the fact that it would leave us with a 25 man squad, but not that it is alright. We still need to sign players.
Kai Havertz is already confirmed, with Timber and Declan Rice incoming. That would take us to 27 players. So we still need to shed at least 2…
The two obvious ones are Rob Holding and Folarin Balogun. I would not also be surprised if Arthur Okonkwo is also loaned out again.
Karl Hein does not require registering on the A list due to his age. That means if he continues as our 3rd choice keeper, we can free up a place on our A list for another player. If Okonkwo remains (and Hein is lined up), then the Englishman takes up a squad spot.
14 NHG players and 9 HG will give us 23 players registered. That then free’s ourselves up to sign Rice, Havertz and Timber without fear of leaving a player unregistered.
At that point, we will be at 25. Any further transfers will be made on a “one in one out” basis – although we could sign Romeo Lavia without needing to register him.
If we wish to sign anyone else, we do have further assets we can sell: Kieran Tierney, Thomas Partey, Mohamed Elneny, Emile Smith Rowe, Reiss Nelson and Eddie Nketiah have all been linked with moves away over the last 12 months.
(Note: This blog is being written on 30/06, so it might be confirmed that Nelson is leaving due to his contract expiring by the time this is published).
You also do not want to be going into the season with exactly 25 players registered.
Having just 23 registered will allow you to make a couple of signings in January without the need to sell or de-register.
So whilst Arsenal’s squad is currently bloated, and we have close to a dozen players too many, the situation can be easily dealt with.
The bigger concern would be if we had too many NHG and not enough HG. That would lead us with huge headaches as we would be limited to only buying English players.
We now just need to dump that deadwood.
Keenos
She Wore A Yellow Ribbon 