The only restriction while naming this squad is that there is a bunch of 8 people who need to follow certain criteria. Lets call these 8 people ’special ones’.

So a club has to go about finding 8 ’special ones’ since the league says they need to. So they look through their club, and they fill these positions with any people who are either

(a) Under 21, OR
(b) Homegrown.

Now they have their list of 8 special ones, and they can compete in the league.

Another addition to the rule is that any player who is not a part of the squad of 25 but is U-21 can be added to a matchday squad at any time. For others, the squad cannot be changed at anytime in the season except once for sometime after January.

HOMEGROWN

If the player has trained in any club based in England/Wales for 3 years before the age of 21 (not necessarily successive years), then he qualifies as homegrown for the rest of his career. If he crosses 21 and is not yet homegrown, then there is no way for him to become homegrown, even if he ends up playing for England. If the player goes out on loan for a season (eg the guys that we send to Belgium due to Work Permit issues) then that season will NOT count towards his 3 year mark.

Examples

* Welbeck, O’Shea, Fletcher, Giggs, Evans ARE homegrown, even though only Welbeck is English (Giggs as Welsh also qualifies). O’Shea, Fletcher, Evans would not qualify as home-grown had they not trained here for so long before their 21st birthday.

* John Obi Mikel is homegrown, and would have been even if he transfered to Chelsea after spending a year at United. Same with many of the Arsenal guys such as Senderos, Clichy, Song, Denilson, Bendtner, maybe Eboue, etc.

* Macheda, Petrucci, Fabio, Rafael will ALL be classified as homegrown they day they complete their 3rd year with us. NONE are homegrown yet. For now, it doesn’t matter, since they are all U-21, and would thus be considered ’special players’ and fall under the quota of 8 anyway.

* Anderson will qualify as a ’special player’ till the day he turns 21. After that, he will not, since he is not a homegrown player, having joined United at 19.

* Hargreaves, Almunia (even if he plays for England) will never be considered homegrown. Neither would have Roy Keane.

* Darron Gibson WILL be considered a homegrown player, since he spent 2 years at United after his transfer (that’s 2 to his total), a year at Antwerp (that doesn’t count), a year at Wolves (that’s 1 more), and then a couple of years with us again (that’s 2 more) before the age of 21. So, he trained for 5 years in England, which qualifies him as homegrown.

SQUAD

Some caveats:

* A team can have less than 25 people in their squad
* A team can have more than 8 home grown players
* A team can have more than 8 U-21 players
* A team can have 0 home grown players if they have 8 U-21 players
* A team can have 0 U-21 players if they have 8 home grown players

Basically, look at the number 8 like a magic number that you have to fill. Thus, in a way, the restriction is not really the number 8, rather, the number 17.

To sum up everything in one sentence;

A team can have a maximum of 17 players who are not homegrown and are also currently over the age of 21.

That’s it. Everything else just follows by nature.

If anything I mentioned above is incorrect, then the statement that Scudamore made is incorrect.

P.S. the only question I have is this – What about players who were U-21 when the squad was announced at the beginning of the season, but turn 21 post that (and is not homegrown) in say, October? I think such players need to have been U-21 at the time of registration. This would also mean that they cannot count under the ’special player’ limit of 8 after the new squad is announced in February (or whenever it is).