Liverpool FC and the new 25-man squad rule: Will the club be ready? (GUEST ARTICLE)

Guest writer David Bolt takes a look at how the new 25-man squad rule will affect Liverpool, and considers whether the club has actually prepared well-enough for its implementation.

After the transfer window closes, Liverpool will have to name their 25-man squad for the Premier League. As it stands, the club has got itself into a bit of a mess with the 25-man squad rule and is facing the prospect of having to pay some players (and not just Brazil’s answer to Mr. Bump, Fabio Aurelio) large sums of money to sit on the sidelines doing nothing.

At present, Liverpool has 27 players that would have to be named in their 25-man squad, 8 of which must be home-grown players. If a club doesn’t have 8, the missing players are deducted from the overall total, e.g. if a club only has 6 home-grown players, they’re only allowed to name a 23-man squad etc.

A home-grown player is defined by the Premier League as ‘one who irrespective of his nationality or age, has been registered with any club affiliated to the Football Association or the Welsh Football Association for a period, continuous or not, of three entire seasons or 36 months prior to his 21st Birthday (or the end of the season during which he turns 21)’. Under-21 players are those whose birthday was after 1st January of the year the season starts, so for this season it’s 1st January 1990.

Liverpool failed to properly plan for this rule coming into existence. When Roy Hodgson took over the club only had 4 homegrown players, which is why Brad Jones and Paul Konchesky were signed. Liverpool were also severely lacking in strength in depth, and due to mistakes made in the transfer market and the owners running out of money, Hodgson was unable to bring in enough new faces.

Consequently, the club was only able to name a 21-man squad last September, with one of the home-grown spots going to Stephen Darby, who didn’t get near the first team and was sent on loan. This season the opposite has happened: Liverpool has too many players, which means some will inevitably need to be sold or loaned.

With this in mind, you have to question the logic in signing Doni. Barring injury or suspension to Reina, he won’t play in the league, so I don’t see the point in using up one of the foreign player spots on someone who won’t play. Why didn’t Liverpool just use Brad Jones (despite being Australian, he counts as home-grown) or keep Peter Gulacsi around as Reina’s backup? Or, if the club didn’t want those players, why didn’t they try and sign someone like Kieren Westwood (a home-grown player), who would have been available on a free?

There are some obvious candidates for the club to sell, or send on loan, without damaging the team. Liverpool could get rid of Brad Jones, Philipp Degen and Nabil El Zhar without missing a beat, but none of these players are particularly attractive to other clubs, especially the injury and error-prone Degen.

It’s hard to see Insua still having any sort of a future at Liverpool, and Jay Spearing, who did well at the end of last season, though I don’t think he’s good enough long-term, finds himself way down the midfield pecking order. I’d be surprised if at least one of these players doesn’t get moved on.

Christian Poulsen was a much-maligned (unfairly so in my opinion) signing last season. He was never going to be the long-term answer in midfield, just a stopgap suited for the transitional phase Liverpool were in. Well, Liverpool are seemingly out of that transitional phase and now have better options than Poulsen, so he could also be moved on without adversely affecting the squad.

Joe Cole seemed like a good signing at the time but hasn’t worked out. If Cole could get back to his best, he could still be an asset for the team, especially off the bench, but that just hasn’t looked like happening. Luckily, he’s still got enough of a reputation to be wanted by other clubs, so you’d think that selling him wouldn’t be a problem. However, his wages are so high it may be tougher than you’d think to find a club willing to buy/loan him, unless he’s willing to lower his wage demands.

Similarly, the future of Alberto Aquilani is unclear. There are equally valid arguments for keeping or for getting rid of him. In preseason he looked good in some games, but totally disinterested in others. Looking at the starting line-ups of the two games so far, it’s hard to see where Aquilani would fit into the midfield, especially with Gerrard still to come back, and I think he’d only make the bench if there were a number of injuries. But, the club would be looking at a huge loss if they were to sell him, and the interest in him from clubs back in Italy doesn’t seem to be heading anywhere, so he may have to stick around this season.

Not only does Liverpool have to get players off the books in order to satisfy the 25-man squad rule, there are still weak areas in the squad that need to be addressed. For example, the club still needs to beef up its options in defence and attack; with N’Gog not having shown any signs of improvement, and with Bolton rumoured to be interested in him (as a possible makeweight in a deal for Gary Cahill), it could be a good time to sell, but Dalglish will probably want a replacement lined up before allowing him to leave, and there does seem to be a paucity of available strikers at present.

As a consequence of the stranger signings of the late Benitez era, Liverpool have on their books a lot of highly paid players, who don’t have a future at the club, and aren’t that appealing to other clubs (I don’t think Hodgson’s signings have hurt the club too badly in that respect), so can’t easily be sold. Understandably, with money being available, Dalglish chose to spend it on upgrading the squad.

At the moment, Liverpool are like someone who’s upgraded their kitchen appliances, but hasn’t found a way to dispose of the old unwanted ones, so some of Liverpool’s squad may end up being like a fridge or an old sink, stuck in the back garden, waiting for someone to take them away, which will be a drain on resources the club can barely afford.

David Bolt