The roster rules are the same for the Europa League and the Champions League and can be found here and here. I am using the rules for the current season and assuming that they will be unchanged—except for age cutoff date—next season.
Each club is required to submit two different roster lists at each registration deadline. The registration deadlines occur immediately prior to each qualification/playoff round, the group stage, and the knock out stage. There are limitations on registering players who have already played for someone else in the same competition during the same season, but those limits do not matter right now.
The “B” list is the easier to explain. A player is eligible to be place on
Southampton’s “B” list if they were born on or after 1 January 1994 and were
eligible to play for Southampton for any two uninterrupted years since their 15th
birthday. If they are 16, then need to
have been registered with Southampton for the last two years. There is no limit to the number of players who
can be registered on the B list.
I went through the official Southampton FC website (and
other sources—but not Football Manager) and came up with a list of 27 B list
eligible players for next season. I chose
to stop my list with the second year scholars because the younger players are
unlikely to play for us in Europe next year.
Very likely all the first year scholars would also be eligible for the B
list.
One second year scholar, Marcus Barnes, does not appear to
be eligible for the B list because he has not been with the club long enough,
but it is close. He would be eligible
for the knockout stage B list. I doubt he
will play in European competition next year, but he would have to be registered
on the A list to be eligible for the earlier phases of the competition.
Southampton can register up to 25 players on the A
list. However, at least eight players
must be “locally trained” and at least four of those players must be “club-trained.” The other four can be “association-trained.”
“Club-trained” players are ones who have been registered
with Southampton for three full seasons between ages 15 and 21. The seasons can include the ones where the
player turns 15 or 21. Thus, Morgan
Schneiderlin is club-trained. He was
born on 8 November 1989. He came to Southampton
at age 18 in 2008 and was registered with us for the next three full seasons—the
seasons during which he turned 19, 20, and 21. I think he would also qualify as
club-trained at Strasbourg because he was registered with them in the seasons
he turned 15, 16, 17, and 18.
As best I can tell, the only other player who qualifies as
club-trained is Lloyd Isgrove who joined Southampton at age nine and has been
here ever since except for a single loan spell which does not disqualify him.
An “association-trained” player is one who has been
registered with one or more clubs from the same association for three seasons
or 36 months between the ages of 15 and 21.
Obviously, all club-trained players are also association-trained players
for the nation in which the club is registered.
Our association-trained players are all pretty obvious except for American
Cody Cropper who was registered with Ipswich Town before he turned 18. (See
here.)
If a club does not have enough club-trained or
association-trained players, it must leave the roster spots empty. This means that, right now, our A list could
only have 23 players on it because we do not have enough club-trained players. This is not a real problem right now because
we only have 24 players to fit onto the A list and that includes Barnes,
Osvaldo, and Ramirez. (I am assuming
that Ramirez and Osvaldo are finished here—although I do list them.) It does
represent a potential problem if we transfer in more than two new players this
summer.
Not surprisingly, these rules make Morgan Schneiderlin very
important. We cannot fully replace him. We might be able to replace him on the field,
but we cannot replace his roster spot.
If he goes in the summer, we can only register 22 players on the A list.
Isgrove is also important.
Unless the club decides that he is worse than no one, he must (and,
therefore, probably will) be retained for next season.
Our low number of club-trained players probably seems
strange given our history of bringing young academy players into the first
team, but it really isn’t. The academy players
who are under 21 get registered on the B list.
If we had needed to register for Europe in 2013-2014, our only
club-trained players would have been Schneiderlin and Lallana. This year it would have been Schneiderlin and no one else.
These rules create the possibility of some rather strange (but
unlikely) transfer decisions. If we
bought Nathan Dyer from Swansea, he would count as a club-trained player for
us. I do not mean to suggest that such a
transfer is likely, but Dyer would not take up an extra European roster slot. (Gareth Bale, Theo Walcott, and Alex
Oxlade-Chamberlin would also help in this same way. Maybe we should offer to take a couple of
them on loan next season.)
This does not mean that we will be short of players to
compete next season. Our B list contains
Ward-Prowse, Reed, Targett, and Gallagher all of whom will play for us next
season. Very likely if we are playing in
Europe Mayuka will not be on the roster and Rodriguez will either be healthy or
replaced. I also think it is unlikely that our back up
goalies will be Davis, Cropper, and Gazzaniga.
That being said, we do have limited flexibility. We would want to keep our two club-trained
players, five association-trained players, and ten other players leaving only
six openings for additional players which needs to include any backup goalie
upgrades. (The numbers change if loaned
players are not retained.)
This is the jigsaw puzzle now facing the club’s management,
with the additional problem that they do not yet know whether we are going to
be playing in Europe or at what level.
Lots more money is available to purchase new players if we are in the
Champions League, but unless we finish third or higher we cannot count on having
that money. The fourth place playoff is
not played until late in the transfer window.
It may well be that an additional consequence of losing that playoff
will be the sale of Schneiderlin and Clyne to clubs that are still in the
competition. This is probably one reason
why Clyne’s contract status needs to be resolved sooner than Schneiderlin’s.
It is also difficult for the club to determine whether it
needs to buy English players. We could
lose Bertrand, Clyne, and Rodriguez this summer. That would leave us with only five players
for the four association-trained slots, but that includes Barnes, Cropper, and
Kelvin Davis. Obviously, we would need
to upgrade on that selection. On the
other hand, if we keep two of the three potential departees we do not need to
buy English.
The jigsaw puzzle is further complicated by the more
stringent European Financial Fair Play (FFP) rules and (these days) exchange
rates. Southampton lost £12 million in 2012 and £7 million in
2013. While the FFP loses are less than
that, a similar loss for last season would have Southampton pushing right at the
limits of what is permitted by UEFA—especially given the fall in value of the
Euro. If Southampton is heading for a
profit this year, that sign of progress will undoubtedly negate any real
problems with UEFA, but that is a reason to delay finalizing any transactions
past 30 June 2015 so that the profit on last summer’s transfers shows up as a
bottom line profit this year.
There are, of
course, other complications which I cannot ascertain either because I do not
have access to the necessary information or because I know absolutely nothing about
them.
In any case, here is the roster eligibility list I compiled:
A LIST PLAYERS
Other Association
Trained Club Trained
Alderweireld Bertrand Isgrove
Elia Barnes Schneiderlin
Fonte Clyne
Gardos Cropper
Gazzaniga Davis,
K
Long Davis, S
Mane Forster
Mayuka Rodriguez
Osvaldo
Pelle
Ramirez
Tadic
Wanyama
Yoshida
B LIST PLAYERS
Britt
Clinton
Deasy
Debayo
Demkiv
Gallagher
Gape
Hesketh
Irvine
Isted
Johnson
Little
Mason
McCarthy
McQueen
Mugabi
Reed
Regis
Rowe
Seager
Sims
Sinclair
Stephens
Targett
Turnbull
Ward-Prowse
Wood
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