Liverpool is approaching the deadline for submitting its confirmed Premier League squad. Here’s how we expect it to shape up, with a Ryan Gravenberch bonus.
Liverpool will soon have to submit its official Premier League squad. The Reds can name up to 25 players, with Jürgen Klopp set to make his selections.
Obviously, Liverpool has not been able to add to its roster since the transfer market closed on September 1, although it could technically still sign free agents between now and the squad registration deadline. The Premier League demands that those lists are submitted by 2pm UK time on September 13, per 90MIN.
This summer, Ryan Gravenberch was a transfer deadline day arrival. Liverpool has time to register him — but interestingly, it almost certainly will not be doing so.
That’s because Gravenberch, despite being 21 already, still qualifies as an under-21 player for another season. In the Europa League, that status comes with the caveat that the player must have been at the club for at least two uninterrupted years, but the Premier League has no such requirement.
That effectively makes Gravenberch a ‘free’ player, at least for one season. He joins the likes of Harvey Elliott and Stefan Bajčetić in not yet requiring registration, providing Liverpool with some helpful flexibility.
However, Liverpool must still comply with the homegrown regulations. In order to name the full squad of 25, Klopp must have eight homegrown players — it is not a true ‘quota’, in that the Reds face no punishment for falling below that number, but there is a hard cap of 17 non-homegrown players.
As a result, if Liverpool names fewer than eight homegrown players, its squad will simply have to be smaller than the 25-man maximum. That happened last season, when only seven homegrown players were named — and since then, Jordan Henderson, James Milner, Alex Oxlade-Chamberlain and Nat Phillips have all departed.
On the other hand, Curtis Jones is no longer a ‘free’ U21 player, meaning he is expected to be registered in Liverpool’s Premier League squad for the first time this season, taking up a homegrown slot. Even so, that still leaves Klopp with just four homegrown players. The other slots are taken up by Trent Alexander-Arnold, Joe Gomez and Caoimhín Kelleher.
The upshot is that Liverpool is limited to a maximum squad of 21. However, this is not necessarily a major negative. Klopp trusts a number of his younger, unregistered players to play a genuine role this season, while there is plenty of transfer leeway to add homegrown talent in January.
Interestingly, there is also a little bit of transfer wiggle room in the non-homegrown column. Thanks to Gravenberch’s U21 status, it is expected that Klopp will only register 16 foreign players, meaning Liverpool can add one more in the winter without having to unregister anyone else.
Liverpool utilized that transfer flexibility last summer. It had left itself one spare non-homegrown slot, and filled it with Cody Gakpo.
Still, the bottom line is that Liverpool looks set to submit a 20-man list to the Premier League, five below the allowed size. Even factoring in youngsters like Bajčetić and Elliott, it’s a pretty small squad for Klopp to be working with — it remains to be seen whether FSG is left wishing it made another addition or two.
