Why Arsenal’s squad of 25 has only 20 players!

By Tony Attwood

Now this is where I traditionally go very wrong, so when you spot my errors please can you correct my workings gently, recognising that I am now a year older than I was last season, when I was pretty old anyway.

We actually have a squad of 29 players.   But four of these are now out on loan, making us a squad of 25.

But we must then remember that  five of the remaining players are under 21 and so not included in calculations of the 25 man squad, which gives us a squad in terms of Uefa rules and PL “home grown” rules, of just 20.  Meaning that if the manager wanted to go out and buy some more men in January, nothing is stopping him, unless of course Arsenal Supporters’ Trust come up with another “We only have 50p to spend” campaign, and the club gets so bored with it all, they give in and say, ok, “it’s only 50p, we’ll give it to you if only you can shut up and go away.”

Our five under age players who are not on loan are, I think, serious contenders for places in the team.  And indeed the encouragement to them is that as we do only have a squad of 20 players aged over 21, they should have every opportunity to get games.

Indeed the way the manager played Guendouzi last season suggests that he has no trouble playing younger members of the team when he sees real talent – as all these youngsters seem to have.

Here’s the chart – I have not designated any of the under 21s as HG or otherwise as it does not influence whether they can play or not.

N	Name	Age	On loan	HG?	“25”
1	Gabriel Martinelli	18
2	William Saliba	18	On loan at Saint-Étienne
3	Reiss Nelson	19
4	Emile Smith Rowe	19
5	Joe Willock	20
6	Matteo Guendouzi	20
7	Eddie Nketiah	20	On loan at Leeds United
8	Konstantinos Mavropanos	21			1
9	Kieran Tierney	22			2
10	Ainsley Maitland-Niles	22		HG	3
11	Dani Ceballos	23	On loan from Real Madrid		4
12	Lucas Torreira	23			5
13	Rob Holding	23		HG	6
14	Héctor Bellerín	24		HG	7
15	Nicolas Pépé	24			8
16	Calum Chambers	24		HG	9
17	Matt Macey	24		HG	10
18	Sead Kolašinac	26			11
19	Granit Xhaka	26			12
20	Bernd Leno	27			13
21	Mohamed Elneny	27	On loan at Beşiktaş
22	Shkodran Mustafi	27			14
23	Emiliano Martínez	27		HG	15
24	Alexandre Lacazette	28			16
25	Henrikh Mkhitaryan	30	On loan at Roma
26	Mesut Özil	30			17
27	Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang	30			18
28	Sokratis Papastathopoulos	31			19
29	David Luiz	32			20

As an age range this is not at all bad in my opinion.   As for the spread of positions, we do only have three keepers in the squad, and so I suspect a fourth could be added from the under 23 squad if any of the three got injured.

However a rash of injuries of the type that Arsenal can collect if the referees choose to allow a free for all in matches, could stretch the squad a little.  But at least the manager won’t have to worry about the nationality of who he goes out to buy in January.