Manchester City Will Have To Sell Before They Can Buy

And it is nothing to do with the application of Financial Fair Play Rules!

For anyone who has ever played Championship Manager on the computer you will be aware how many complex rules there are around the make up of football squads. This year, those complexities probably mean that Manchester City may well have finished their Summer spending unless other players move on.

The Premier League rules about squad size dictate there can be no more than 17 players within the main list of 25 players who do not count as home grown. Home grown according to the Premier League does not mean English but simply any player of any nationality or age who played for an FA registered club for 3 seasons or more before the age of 21.

The Premier League allow an additional list of players to be maintained who are Under 21 years of age – so for instance a player like Phil Foden may not be recorded on the Main Squad list. Or they could be if a club needed to bolster their home grown numbers.

More from Man City Editorials

The Champions League have a separate set of rules in play. Here the List A is made up of 25 players, 2 of whom must be goalkeepers and 8 of whom must be locally trained. Locally trained is either club trained players who were registered at a club for 3 years or more between the ages of 15 and 21, or players who were trained to the same criteria by another club within the same federation. The extra complexity is no more than 4 of the 8 locally trained players may be association trained. Still with me?

The List B of players is about the age of the player. So for the new season will be anyone born after 1 January 1998 who played for a club for 2 years or more after age 15!

So in terms of the Champions League a club does not have to register 25 players. Last season Manchester City registered a List A of 22 players and bolstered their squad with List B players.

So if you are still following this complex and messy set of rules you may realise that City have a full roster of non home grown players – partly because Gabriel Jesus is no longer 21 or under!

Should City sign any new players before the current season starts then space would have to be made in the squad unless they were replacing existing home grown players.

So our 17 non home grown players are:

Ederson, Bravo, Laporte,Otamendi, Mendy, Zinchenko, Danilo, Rodrigo, Fernandinho, Gundogan, De Bruyne, Silva, Sane, Bernardo, Mahrez, Jesus and Aguero.

This seems to leave us with a further 8 home grown players – Stones, Walker, Delph, Sterling, Foden, Muric, Grimshaw and Angelino. The last 4 of those names are club trained.

This suggests we will probably be in a position to name a full 25 player squad for List A Champions League this season,

It also probably means there is no place at all in our squad for either Philippe Sandler or Eliaquim Mangala so moves may be afoot for both players.

Suddenly it is clear why if City were to sign Cancelo, Danilo must depart and why Riesgo will probably require Bravo to move on.

Next. Fabian Delph to Leave?. dark

However the final squad shapes up it is worth marvelling at just how good it actually is! Roll on the new season!

Home/Man City News