Arsenal’s squad for next season, including home grown and under 21 status.

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Figures by Andrew Crawshaw.  Interpretation and vague meanderings by Tony Attwood

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Below is the list of the 28 players currently logged as being in Arsenal’s first team who will count as over 21 for next season.

Because it always brings a bit of debate each summer, the detail of the “over 21” malarkey is that players do not become “over 21” on their 21st birthday.  Rather there is a “relevant date” for them to be over 21.   For the 2017/18 campaign Under-21 players had to be born on or after 1 January 1996.   For 2018/19 we can therefore expect that under 21 players had to be born on or after 1 January 1997.

Mavopranos was born on 11/12/1997 ; the Jeff was born on 17/01/1998 and Ainsley Maitland Niles on 20/8/1998 so they can all play for the first team and not be counted for next season.  And thus these players are not included in this chart.

This leaves us with a chart of 28 players who are over 21 and registered to Arsenal for next season.  This has to be whittled down to 25 either through sales or loans, and any additional over 21 players brought in also have to have players removed for them.

Concerning “home grown” regulations, a club can have no more than 17 players in its rosta of 25 players who are NOT home grown.  I did see commentaries last season which suggested that somehow if a foreign player was sold a home grown would have to go too, but it doesn’t work like that, or the reverse.  Simply the rule is no more than 17 non-home grown in a squad.

Home grown status can be achieved according to where the player was trained, although once the UK leaves the EU this is most likely going to be changed to make it much harder to bring in non-England players, under the utterly mistaken belief that it is the number of non-England players playing in the Premier League that reduces England’s chances of winning stuff.  Nothing could be further from the truth, as we’ve repeated shown, with evidence.

Anyway, Arsenal has just 15 non-home-grown players on the list at present, so this is not an immediate issue.   What the club has to do is cut the number of players down from 29 to 25 by sale or loan, and then cut further for each new sale.

But enough of that, back to the player list.

Player	Contract end	Last loan	Home Grown
Aaron Ramsey	6/30/2019		Y
Jack Wilshere	6/30/2018		Y
Rob Holding	6/30/2020		Y
Calum Chambers	6/30/2020		Y
Danny Welbeck	6/30/2019		Y
Hector Bellerin	6/30/2023		Y
Deyan Iliev			Y
Matt Macey	6/30/2018		Y
Laurent Koscielny	6/30/2020
Henrikh Mkhitarian	6/30/2021
Andre Lacazette	6/30/2022
Mesut Özil	6/30/2021
David Ospina	6/30/2019
Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang	6/30/2021
Nacho Monreal	6/30/2019
Santi Cazorla	6/30/2018
Shkodran Mustafi	6/30/2021
Granit Xhaka	6/30/2021
Saad Kolasinac	6/30/2022
Petr Cech	6/30/2018
Mohamed Elneny	6/30/2020
Alex Iwobi	6/30/2020		Y
Emiliano Martinez	6/30/2021	Getafe	Y
Carl Jenkinson	6/30/2018	Birmingham	Y
Cohen Bramall	6/30/2018	Birmingham	Y
Lucas Pérez	6/30/2020	Deportivo	N15
Joel Campbell	6/30/2018	Real Betis	N16
Chuba Akpom	6/30/2019	Sint-Truidense	Y

So, if anyone wishing to play manager needs to exterminate three players from the list to begin with and then remove on man for each and every new signing, just making sure that the number of non-home-growns does not go about 17.

Simple eh?  I really don’t know why these managers get paid as much as they do.