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Newcastle United’s transfer search has taken them far and wide this summer – and it isn’t finished yet as Ross Wilson continues to clock up the air miles.
The Magpies have undergone a squad revamp since the end of last season, with a number of big-name stars leaving the club and five players having been brought in so far.
Wilson and the recruitment team are continuing to push for additions to new manager Matthias Jaissle’s ranks, although a potential deal for Pierre-Emile Hojbjerg has stalled after the Dane decided a move to Tyneside wasn’t right for him.
Hojbjerg was on a longer list of midfield options for Newcastle, who still have a great deal of wiggle room when it comes to building Jaissle’s team. The manager admitted he’d looked at the squad mapping with Wilson, and a number of key areas still need to be addressed.
So with Newcastle looking to make further signings this summer, it’s worth looking at the Premier League rules and exactly who can and cannot be registered at the end of the transfer window.
The league’s registration rules state that a club must name a squad with a maximum of 25 senior players containing at most 17 non-homegrown players and the rest homegrown.
A homegrown player is a player who, according to the Premier League rules has “irrespective of nationality or age, been registered with any club affiliated to The Football Association or the Football Association of Wales for a period, continuous or not, of three entire seasons, or 36 months, before his 21st birthday (or the end of the season during which he turns 21)”.
Therefore, Danish frontman William Osula and Swedish winger Anthony Elanga both qualify as homegrown players. Osula was in the youth academy at Sheffield United from 2018, joining when he was aged 15, while Elanga moved to England as a 12-year-old and was registered with Manchester United from 2015.
Clubs are then helped by the fact that players born on or after January 1, 2005, regardless of where they come from, do not have to be registered in the main 25-man squad and instead go on an under-21s list.
Given the new transfer strategy adopted this summer by the Magpies, they now have several stars who don’t need to be included in the 25-man squad, with Bazoumana Toure, Ewen Jaouen, Sean Steur and Aladji Bamba all joining the likes of Lewis Miley, Sean Neave, Leo Shahar and Aidan Harris.
So Newcastle currently have seven non-homegrown players over the age of 21, when they are allowed to have 17. They are Lukas Hornicek, Malick Thiaw, Sven Botman, Joelinton, Nick Woltemade and Yoane Wissa.
They also have 10 homegrown players over the age of 21 in Nick Pope, Dan Burn, Tino Livramento, Lewis Hall, Jacob Ramsey, Joe Willock, Osula, Elanga, Jacob Murphy and Harvey Barnes.
So that means that United currently have 17 senior players in total when they can register 25. And that number could be reduced further if the exits of Nick Pope and Joe Willock – both tipped to leave the club this summer – go through. It shows just how thin the squad remains in certain areas.
However, the rules mean they could still bring in up to eight new players aged over 21 should they wish, with at least one full-back, two midfielders and possibly a right-winger and another forward on their wishlist. And with just seven non-homegrown players, they could add 10 more international stars to their squad if they wanted, although that would mean a couple of homegrown players would have to leave.
Either way, it means Wilson has a great deal of flexibility – unlike some other Premier League clubs – when it comes to bringing in players before the window closes on September 1.
Abdulhafiz Teslim
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