The 25 man squad

[jedimonkey]

Ok, so we can take this chat away from the Daily ITK thread I have created this thread.

We currently have 29 players at the club (not including the players out on loan) over the age of 21 which means that if we don't sign anyone else before the end of the window that we would have to name 25 of them in the squad and then have 4 players left out who wouldn't be able to play in the Premier League.

As two of the 29 are extra goalkeepers, Ben Alnwick and David Button, I think it is fair to say that we have 27 players left to fit in 25 spaces.

Someone has mentioned elsewhere that we currently have 1 too many foreign players in the squad, but I'm not so sure. Maybe they were including Bongani Khumalo, but he has gone out on loan for the season.

The current squad of 27 (excluding the 2 spare keepers) is

GK: Gomes, Friedel, Cudicini
DF: King, Gallas, Dawson, Assou-Ekotto, Kaboul, Corluka, Bassong, Hutton
MF: van der Vaart, Modric, Pienaar, Jenas, Huddlestone, Lennon, Sandro, Bale, Palacios, Kranjcar, Livermore, Bentley, dos Santos
FW: Crouch, Pavlyuchenko, Defoe

We currently have 10 homegrown players in the 27 (the ones in BOLD above), and so we are doing ok on this front as we need at least 8 in the 25 man squad.

If we do happen to sell dos Santos, Hutton and Bentley then we are down to 24 players and still have 9 homegrown players.

I think if can sell those 3 players that we will start to see some action with regards to additions to the squad, and possibly more movement out.

If we do sell players like Palacios and Bassong then that is not going to affect the home grown rule, so it is only if we sell more than 1 other home grown player. If we sell just the one, for example Crouch then we are still within the rules.

So that is the situation at present. Sorry if this has been an obvious post, but there has been lots of chat about the squad ruling recently, and I thought it would be a good idea to have a place to talk about it without annoying the mods any more on the Daily ITK threads.

 

[Ron Burgundy]

We've got a such a bloated squad.

The one I just don't think we'll be able to ship is Bentley. What a bloody fall from grace

We should sell - Bentley, Gio, JJ and Hutton, and possibly Wilson (if we get a replacement) and Crouch (if we get a replacement)

Then use the kids if we get in trouble with injuries

 

[ComfortablyNumb]

"Someone has mentioned elsewhere that we currently have 1 too many foreign players in the squad, but I'm not so sure. Maybe they were including Bongani Khumalo, but he has gone out on loan for the season."

Yep, that was me I'm afraid, and I was thinking of Khumalo. Got it right yesterday but cocked up today.

 

[Maske2g]

This really highlights the lack of foresite in signing Brad Friedel AND extending Cudicini. 3 foreign goalkeepers in the squad is a poor decision.

We need to get rid of 6 and sign 4 according to your analysis

IMO this is ideal...

Out
Hutton - Don't need 3 right backs.
Bassong - don't want to be here.
Palacios - So we can sign Diarra
Bentley - Loser
Gio - face don't fit
And one of the forwards, don't care which

In
Any one of Samba, Cahill, or this Tasci bloke if you all like him
Diarra
Two forwards.

Wishful thinking.......

 

[Spursking]

Rose, Walker and the emergeing Harry Kane could also count as homegrown players, right? If we sell Hutton, Bently, Jenas, Crouch, we will still be alright?

 

[jedimonkey]

Rose, Walker and the emergeing Harry Kane could also count as homegrown players, right? If we sell Hutton, Bently, Jenas, Crouch, we will still be alright?

No, home grown players only count if they are over 21's.

 

[Chimbo!]

GK: Gomes, Friedel, Cudicini
DF: King, Gallas, Dawson, Assou-Ekotto, Kaboul, Corluka, Bassong, Hutton
MF: Van der Vaart, Modric, Pienaar, Jenas, Huddlestone, Lennon, Sandro, Bale, Palacios, Kranjcar, Livermore, Bentley, dos Santos
FW: Crouch, Pavlyuchenko, Defoe

It's quite complicated. If we want to buy anyone then we have to sell three players to fit them into the 25 man squad. If we want a defender, a midfielder and a striker then that is a lot of selling. We would have to sell 5 current players to get three new players.

I put my suggestions in bold.

 

[talkshowhost86]

This really highlights the lack of foresite in signing Brad Friedel AND extending Cudicini. 3 foreign goalkeepers in the squad is a poor decision.

We need to get rid of 6 and sign 4 according to your analysis

IMO this is ideal...

Out
Hutton - Don't need 3 right backs.
Bassong - don't want to be here.
Palacios - So we can sign Diarra
Bentley - Loser
Gio - face don't fit
And one of the forwards, don't care which

In
Any one of Samba, Cahill, or this Tasci bloke if you all like him
Diarra
Two forwards.

Wishful thinking.......

I still think there's time for this to happen (although it's looking like we'll struggle to bring in two forwards).

I think Hutton and Dos Santos will be gone soon, Palacios has attracted lots of interest (let's just hope his knee holds out in a medical), people should be interested in Bassong and oddly, given our indifference to them, I reckon we'd be able to shift all of our strikers if necessary.

That just leaves Bentley who could be tricky to shift. I don't think we're actively trying to sell Jenas as he is both versatile and homegrown.

There's still plenty of time in this window for 6 to go out and 4 to come in. But we shall see how Levy and Aitch play it.

 

[Spurs Man]

No, home grown players only count if they are over 21's.

Shouldn't matter though if we targeted the correct players to replace them.

If we sold Hutton, JJ, and Bentley for instance (not gonna happen), we could aim to replace with Cahill, Parker, and Johnson who are all homegrown replacements.

 

[spurslenny]

Question: if we knew that having such a large squad, with many of them unlikely to ever play for us (bentley, dos santos), then why didn't we try shifting some of them in January or at the very start of the TW for sensible fees?

From the outside looking in, our transfer strategy seems to be a bit 'blonde' at times.

 

[kishman]

This is why we really need to sell the likes of Hutton and unfortunately Gio, Bentley and Palacios even if it means getting £2m or £3m less than we originally wanted, as it's better than paying similar amounts for their half or full season wages.

 

[brasil_spur]

It looks like Bentley and Hutton are out given their demotion to training with the reserves. GDS is almost certainly off and we'll only have 3 keepers in the squad. Which puts the current squad situation as:

GK: Gomes, Friedal, Cudicini
RB: Corluka
CB: Gallas, Dawson, King, Kaboul, Bassong
LB: Ekotto
RM: Lennon
CM: Sandro, Modric, Huddlestone, Palacios, Jenas
LM: Bale, Kranjcar, Pienaar
AM: VDV
ST: Defoe, Pavlyuchenko, Crouch

U21 - RB: Walker, LB: Rose

Which totals 23 players, the ones in bold are the home grown contingent, which currently stands at 8.

Which means we can sign two more players before selling. Looking at the squad it seems obvious to me that the two positions we need sign players for are RM & ST which makes a lot of sense of the itk recently that we are in for players like:

RM: Farfan, Affelay, Mata etc...
ST: Huntelaar, Llorente, Adebayor etc...

Then the links to CB's like Samba & Tasci are there as if we manage to sell Bassong then we'll have space for one more to come in.

Same with the links to Diarra & Parker as if we sell Palacios then we'd have another midfield space.

It also goes to show that really we don't want to be selling all our 'deadwood' players as we'd be left short on the squad and would probably unbalance our team too much.

Also if we sell any of our current homegrown lot then we'd need to replace them with a homegrown player, so i highly doubt we'd see Jenas going this window, although i suppose we might see Crouch go that we could offload Cudicini and bring Button into the squad. Friedal seems to have had a relatively injury free career and so between him and Gomes i can't see there being a need very often for a 3rd keeper.

 

[cusop]

Lovely jubberly more complicated then a box of quality street.

I was really excited that some on the thread actually said Bentley trains, amazing I thought he just hung around bars and kicked ball off the roofs of buildings

 

[brasil_spur]

Lovely jubberly more complicated then a box of quality street.

I was really excited that some on the thread actually said Bentley trains, amazing I thought he just hung around bars and kicked ball off the roofs of buildings

:eh:

 

[Ron Burgundy]

Incidentally, Massimo Lungo just tweeted that Bentley and Hutton are training with the youth team

Mason then said "you can't tweet that kind of thing you bellend, lol"

Kids eh?

 

[Legacy]

Gomes, Friedel, Button

Dawson, King, Kaboul, Gallas, Assou Ekotto, Corluka, Cahill

Bale, Lennon, Huddlestone, Jenas, Modric, Kranjcar, Pienaar, Van der Vaart, Sandro, Diarra, Marin

Defoe, Pavlyuchenko, Adebayor, Leandro (Jan window)

Walker, Rose

Outgoings: Cudicini, Hutton, Bassong, Bentley, Giovani, Palacios, Crouch, Livermore (loan)

I could live with that.

 

[Legacy]

What's happened to Alnwick, by the way? We renewed his contract, but he's now been replaced with Button on the first team page on the OS.

 

[brett.spurs]

1. David Button
2. Gareth Bale
3. Michael Dawson
4. Ledley King
5. Aaron Lennon
6. David Bentley
7. Tom Huddlestone
8. Jermaine Jenas
9. Jake Livermore
10. Peter Crouch
11. Jermain Defoe
----------------------------
12. Heurelho Gomes
13. Brad Friedel
14. Carlo Cudicini
15. Vedran Corluka
16. Alan Hutton
17. Younes Kaboul
18. William Gallas
19. Sebastien Bassong
20. Benoit Assou-Ekotto
21. Wilson Palacios
22. Sandro
23. Luka Modric
24. Niko Kranjcar
25. Steven Pienaar
26. Rafael Van Der Vaart
27. Giovani Dos Santos
28. Roman Pavlyuchenko

 

[talkshowhost86]

1. David Button
2. Gareth Bale
3. Michael Dawson
4. Ledley King
5. Aaron Lennon
6. David Bentley
7. Tom Huddlestone
8. Jermaine Jenas
9. Jake Livermore
10. Peter Crouch
11. Jermain Defoe
----------------------------
12. Heurelho Gomes
13. Brad Friedel
14. Carlo Cudicini
15. Vedran Corluka
16. Alan Hutton
17. Younes Kaboul
18. William Gallas
19. Sebastien Bassong
20. Benoit Assou-Ekotto
21. Wilson Palacios
22. Sandro
23. Luka Modric
24. Niko Kranjcar
25. Steven Pienaar
26. Rafael Van Der Vaart
27. Giovani Dos Santos
28. Roman Pavlyuchenko

At first I thought you were picking a very odd XI for the next game there Brett but that's a much clearer way of looking at it.

So we can basically afford to get red of 3 of the top 11 and as many as we want of the bottom 11 providing that we leave ourselves with a sensible size squad.

It also means we need to get rid of at least 4 players before we bring anyone else in. As i said earlier I still think we'll see Hutton, Bentley (somehow), Gio, Bassong and Palacios go, together with one striker and probably Cudicini as well.

That would give us a 21 man squad leaving 4 places open for us to buy.

It's worth keeping in mind though that with Rose and Walker we have two extra first team squad members and with an actual squad of 27 players we'd still be very bloated.

 

[bubble07]

1. David Button
2. Gareth Bale
3. Michael Dawson
4. Ledley King
5. Aaron Lennon
6. David Bentley
7. Tom Huddlestone
8. Jermaine Jenas
9. Jake Livermore
10. Peter Crouch
11. Jermain Defoe
----------------------------
12. Heurelho Gomes
13. Brad Friedel
14. Carlo Cudicini
15. Vedran Corluka
16. Alan Hutton
17. Younes Kaboul
18. William Gallas
19. Sebastien Bassong
20. Benoit Assou-Ekotto
21. Wilson Palacios
22. Sandro
23. Luka Modric
24. Niko Kranjcar
25. Steven Pienaar
26. Rafael Van Der Vaart
27. Giovani Dos Santos
28. Roman Pavlyuchenko

Players in red need to get sold which will free up 4 places for which 3 should be from the following positions;

One Right midfielder/right forward to compete with Lennon and score goals (GFTS)
Two Centre forwards who can actually score (B&Y)

Then if time and or money the club could work on improving players in like for like positions by selling one and buying an upgrade (ie Diarra for Palacios and Cahill for Bassong for example) OR get a last minute deadline day loan

So in summary I am proposing 7 outgoings (3 homegrown) and ONLY 3 INCOMINGS!!!!!!!! I think I'm a changed man!!

So are we all singing from the same hymn sheet SC followers?