Squad watch (currently 2020-21)

Don't tell Nigel Farage, he might start banging on about "independence" and "sovereignty" again...

 

Are you sure? Wouldn't that mean that Swansea's Welsh players couldn't be homegrown and club trained?

 

I'm not completely sure but the PL rules mention the FA of Wales and the UEFA ones don't. It would mean that Swansea couldn't count players trained in England as locally trained but their own ones would be fine. The real problem is the U-21 rules which allow Sanchez and Foyth not to count in the 17 in the PL but they do in the CL.

 

Something about having spent 2 years at the club, IIRC.
No idea why we named Gazzaniga though, as we don't have to. You need two, but if one gets injured then you can't put another in.
I'd love to hear an explanation from the club about the numbers.

 

Squad striker strategy is going to be interesting.

I assume Lloriente is plan B in the CL (perhaps plan A for Apoel) .
Janssen to be plan A for League Cup games and sub for some
PL games ??

 

Lamela was featured in the squad training photos today:

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A good sign, perhaps?

 

Corroborated

Also, how is it that Juan Foyth appears to have as many teeth as two thirds of the squad combined?

 

He prefers 'Kevin Bacon'.

 

Pochettino's taken a pop at the homegrown rules, particularly the rather strange situations of Davies and Dier.
https://www.theguardian.com/footbal...a-eric-dier-champions-league-squad-uefa-rules

As I've said before, the Davies situation is particularly stupid and extremely harsh to Swansea, if I'm reading it right.
They basically have to pick players that came up through their side, Cardiff's or a bunch of amateur teams.

 

So are the other PL participants in this seasons' CL
suffering as equally bad as us on squad rosters ??

 

Dier's situation isn't strange in any way. He joined Sporting's youth setup aged eight and signed a professional contract with them aged sixteen, so why should he be classified as HG in the Premier League just because his parents happened to have sex there even though he didn't set foot on an English pitch until his six-month loan to Everton when he was aged eighteen?

Davies' situation is a mess, but it has to be said that it's a mess because The FA and FAW ummed and ahhed for so long without someone banging their heads together that there was always going to be an issue at some point, and we're the ones who bore the brunt of it (and let's be honest, is anyone surprised by that?)

 

Dier was born here to English parents and only moved to Portugal because UEFA hired his mum!
He's spent more time in England than a lot of homegrown players and played for the national team at every level from U18 to the senior team.
He doesn't count, but an 18-year-old bought from anywhere in the world would and he can never change it.
It's just not a very well thought out or consistent rule.

The Davies issue just doesn't make any sense at all.
He's not moved to another league system and neither has his club.
What's he being punished for?

 

The fact remains that he was on the books at Sporting since the age of eight and under contract at sixteen, so saying he should be HG based solely on accident of birth is veering into Richard Littlejohn territory - even though Owen Hargreaves put that argument to bed a decade ago.

As for signing eighteen years old to cheat the HG rule, technically that doesn't work either. I seem to recall that Bentaleb wouldn't have counted as HG as we signed him a few weeks after his 18th birthday which meant he just missed the HG cutoff point - which means we can rage at either the transfer window system, Birmingham for offering him a trial, or the club for not acting sooner when he became a free agent.

The Davies situation can best be described with this clip...

We're being punished on the behalf of both The FA and FAW for not addressing something they should have addressed either when Aaron Ramsey just about managed to slip under the HG fence when he signed for Arsenal back in 2008 or when Swansea were promoted to the Premier League in 2011, as both would have highlighted the potential issue - but as with so many things that can be said about The FA, you see more haste when it;s Treebeard's turn to get a round in.

 

ping (as transfer incoming/outgoings have been happening) .

 

How many HG players do we currently have on the roster ??

 

Sessegnon doesn't qualify as U21 for the Europa League but will qualify as HG for that.

 

Thanks, didn't know that but I guess we would need 2 lists, I believe Ben Davies is HG for Prem, but not Europe, so my list is more of a guide.

 

We've actually got more than that: Carter Vickers is 22 and Georgiou 23 so, for the time being at least, are also on our HG list

Probably not for much longer, though