In defence of the 25 man squad

At the end of August all Premier League squads will have to be trimmed to 25 players born before January 1st 1989. Arsene Wenger made some comments last week along the lines of it wasn't helpful. Personally I don't know what his beef is and Arsenal shouldn't have a problem filling the quota as most of their players seem to be brought up through the ranks anyway.

I am not concerned about that lot from south of the Thames though. But in the context of the Premier League and English football in general I think this should be a great benefit. Of course you can't limit the number of EU players in your squad due to labour laws, but the prinipal will surely be to bring on more English talent.

Now clubs like Arsenal, Chelsea, Manchester United and hopefully Spurs will be even further encourage to scout the world and bring in 15-17 year olds into their academies and thus qualify them as home grown players by the time they are 21 so I don't think it will really be too much of a burden.

These rules will make it hard for the likes of Chelsea and Manchester City to stockpile players, because they wont be able to have 30 man squads if they are all over 21. It will give the younger players a shot at getting the odd game. When you consider that 18 players are named in a squad each match it only takes a few injuries and/or suspensions then you will need to name some youngsters. So for Spurs the likes of Walker, Rose, Bostock, Parrett, Townsend and Livermore may get a look in.

Looking at Tottenham's squad we have by lucky chance exactly 25 players who are classifed as over 21, 12 of whom are home grown. ( I am not sure about Keane because of his time with Inter Milan.) When you consider that Bale, Walker, Rose, Dos Santos and Sandro are amongst the group under 21, we have quite a healthy squad.

The upshot of these rule changes will probably mean every loan contract will include a right to recall clause, thus enabling the parent club to enhance their squad when they are short of players while giving their youngsters some game time at lower division clubs.

Any transfer dealing will need to be made with the squad make up in mind. But for Spurs this is not a real problem as we could still sell four home grown players to still have the right mix in our squad. Let us just hope the national side will reap the benefit in a few years time.