All the talk of potential Ins and Outs, can someone help me clarify the club homegrown standing for CL next season? do we have enough at the moment to name a 24 man squad or what? will we have to name some EDS players to up the number?

Homegrown means that players who have spent 3 years or more in our academy. But you have to be careful because not only do we have a submit an A list of players we can also submit a B list. The B list is for all players under 21 who have spent 3 years at the academy and there is no restriction on the number and we don't have to submit that list until 24hours before kick off.

If you therefore go to our players site on OS and discount all the academy EDS players you will find that in the over 21 category we only have Micah Richards and Michael Johnson who are classed as homegrown. In essence this means that the CL squad, the A list can only contain 22 names (discounting Johnson). because the other 3 places are reserved for homegrown players. To increase the squad we would have to re sign the likes of Sturridge or Joey Barton (lol)

In prem league it is different, you have to have out of the 25 players 8 homegrown players, the meaning of homegrown for those rules is that they have to come out of an academy in the countries asociation so the players like Clichy who came out of Arsenals academy qualify, along with Barry, Lescott and Hart. We should if memory serves me right be able to have a 25 man squad for the prem league.

The big connundrum from our managers point of view is that by attracting world class players they will want to compete in both so ideally your squads should be the same otherwise someone will not be able to take part in the CL.

There is a difference between homegrown for the PL and CL. For example, I think Gareth Barry and Joe Hart are counted as homegrown in the PL as they're from an english club's academy.

Also for some reason, and I'm probably wrong here, I thought the CL only had 2 homegrown spots for academy players and the other 2 were for players from the academy of another english club.

^ I could be wrong though.

CL as I understand it you have to have eight players from association 4 of which have to come out of clubs academy. In other words whether it be PL or CL every squad is restricted to 17 foreign players.

ah, fair enough. Geez four is a lot to fill. I reckon we should hold onto Guidetti in that case then. I don't want us loaning him out for so long that he doesn't count as homegrown, like Chelsea did with Bertrand.

Clichy is not from Arsenal's academy, he is from AS Cannes youth system. None of the four Arsenal players we have bought from them are Arsenal youth system products, but Arsenal fans will tell you they're.

I think we are just on the line of 8. Clichy counts as homegrown.

He was with Arsenal for 3 years under the age of 21 so counts as an association homegrown player.

Understood, but does not make him a product of Arsenal's Youth System (i.e. Jack Wilshere). Although, like you said its great he can count as homegrown for us, what a bargain 7m looks like now.

Ah sorry misunderstood your point. I agree to a certain extent, but at what age do you think they should be in the academy to count as a product of rather than just a player they signed at a young age? I'm not sure on that one myself. Have to agree about the bargain he has been.