For the hard of understanding…. Here’s how this works.
The max squad size is 25. We can register up to 17 Overseas players - it’s a hard cap - we don’t have to register 17 we just can’t register more.
Home Grown has no cap - we can register as many as we want - we could register 25 if we wanted and go all Farragey and fuck off the foreigners - but if you use your full complement of 17 OS players you can only register up to 8.
U21’s - there’s no limit as long as they meet the age criteria.
Right now we have 21 players registered, but only 1 of those can be an OS player - and Gravy needs to registered next season as this is his last as an U21.
Fortunately we have 3 OS players - Thiago, Matip & Adrian - out of contract at the end of the season, so that gives us 3 available spots for OS players.
We currently have 3 HG spots free and as Rhys Williams is registered, I’d say more likely 4 as he’s likely getting released.
Harvey, Bradley, Quansah, Doak, Badger, Clark & Luke Chambers DO NOT need to be registered as they qualify as U21 for another year at least.
Morton, Van den Berg, Carvalho, Jaros & Owen Beck would have to be registered to play - so we can register 3 of them or ; if we let Rhys Williams go.
I don’t think Jaros gets registered as a 2rd choice keeper because he’s never going to play - so we’ll likely loan out the keepers.
Incidentally, Pitaluga needs to be registered next season too, so I suspect he’ll be loaned out or released - as his loan really doesn’t seem to have gone well. Harvey Davies has another season as an U21.
There is a question there - because what we want for a third keeper is not a kid, it’s an old keeper that is happy not to play but is still good enough to step in if there’s an emergency - it makes no sense to give that role to a kid that needs games. Ideally we find an old HG keeper - but there aren’t many.
So, we could register Morton, Van den Berg, Beck and Carvalho with no need to sell Gomez and we’d still be able to sign 3 OS players.
We could sell Gomez and we’d still be onky be able to sign 3 OS players, but we would be able to register another HG player.
So, we could go out and sign a new LB, but if they’re an OS player, that’s just one less OS player spot we have left.
Robinson & Maatsen are interesting because they both count as HG, so they could replace Gomez.
What’s a little more difficult is the European squad rules - where they differentiate between club trained and association trained.
You can only have a max of 4 association trained - Carvalho, Van den Berg are definitely Associstion trained and I think Morton & Beck might be too, due to their loans - so we couldn’t go out and buy another HG player AND register all these players for league and Europe.
Gomez is classified as club trained (along with Trent, Kelleher & CJ), so selling him doesn’t open up an extra Euro spot.
It might in a years time as Bradley, Quansah & Harvey will all be club trained.
So… short version - there’s no benefit to selling Gomez unless he wants to go or someone offers us silly money - this season. There’s a bit more of a reason in 12 months time.
That’s probs why Tsimikas and Endo are getting mentioned… as there is more benefit to selling them, in that you can replace them with whoever you want - HG or OS.
