How Does Man City’s Squad Stand Up Against The New Home Grown Rule?

After revisiting how the new Premier League “Home Grown Rule” impacts Aston Villa and confirming that we’re comfortably able to comply with the rules, I couldn’t shake my curiosity about Man City. After all, they must be among the worst offenders in terms of the number of foreign players and I keep hearing about how many they’ll have to offload, right?

Well, unless my understanding of the rules is way off, I didn’t find them to be in bad shape at all. That’s as things stand today of course, there’s a lot of transfer window left, but they’ll have a pretty good idea who they’ll be willing to sacrifice if they bring in new players that take them outside the scope of the rules.
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Delfouneso Heading Out To Bolster The Strikeforce In The Algarve

Martin O’Neill revealed today that Nathan Delfouneso will be travelling out to Portugal tomorrow to link up with the rest of squad and he’s hoping the striker can play some part in Sunday night’s match against Benfica at least. Even if he doesn’t play this weekend, just being with the squad and not stuck at home is good for him ahead of the new season.

The same thinking applies to James Collins who is nursing his calf, but a little Algarve sunshine, golf and team bonding can work wonders I hear.
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Portuguese Shorts – July 29th

The 22 man squad arrived in Portugal ahead of the weekend’s Guandiana Cup friendlies against Feyenoord and Benfica on their own private jet yesterday. That includes Luke Young, James Milner and James Collins, who was cleared after a scan on his calf Wednesday morning.

Luke Young’s agent has confirmed that he is discussing personal terms with Liverpool. Meanwhile, Liverpool manager Roy Hodgson insisted on showing his Macedonian hosts the courtesy of discussing tonight’s Europa League match against Rabotnicki, refusing to discuss Luke or any other Anfield transfer business.

To confuse the issue, The Sun claims that Luke Young didn’t make the trip to Portugal and the deal has “collapsed“. Up to their usual standards of journalism then. He definitely made the trip.
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Liverpool’s Bid For Luke Young Apparently Accepted

Liverpool have reportedly made a £2.5m bid for Luke Young and Martin O’Neill has confirmed the club have received a bid from an unnamed club with Young currently “mulling it over”:-

Martin O’Neill
There has been an offer from a football club, which Luke is mulling over and if it doesn’t materialize then he would also join us [in Portugal] because he needs to play some football soon. We will see how that develops.

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Walsall 1 Aston Villa 2

3,000 Villa fans made it to the Bescot tonight to see a mixed Villa side turn in a comfortable 2-1 victory over Wallsall thanks to a brace from young Andreas Weimann just back from international duty.

As rumoured prior to kick off, Steve Sidwell was included tonight, partnered in the middle by Nigel Reo-Coker wearing the armband, with the side returning to a more familiar 4-4-2, giving the new away kit its first airing.

James Collins lasted all of three minutes before being replaced by Carlos Cuellar, rekindling a centre half partnership with Curtis Davies which I don’t think we’ve seen since the 3-1 victory over Liverpool at Anfield early last season. Hopefully it’s nothing major and just precautionary measure. Update: Collins felt discomfort in his calf and awaits a scan to determine the extent of the injury. He may miss the trip to Portugal.

While Nathan Delfouneso was still packing his bags in France, Andreas Weimann proved he was suffering no hangovers from the European Under 19 Championships, opening the scoring 25 minutes in with a deflected effort.
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England Dumped Out Of European U-19s By Dominant Spain

Spain coasted into the final of the European Under 19 Championship in France with a commanding performance against an England side who are clearly not in the same league technically.

Nathan Baker limped off midway through the first half with what looked like a pulled hamstring, Nathan Delfouneso may have wished he could have joined him after seeing very little of the ball during the first 45 minutes.

Spain held the majority of possession during the first a half and converted that into two well worked goals. Liverpool’s Pacheco got the opener after some find work on Spain’s left drew England’s back line in before the ball was cut back to the far post for Pacheco to casually side foot past Declan Rudd. Captain Keko got the second, again following some nice build up on Spain’s left, drifting into space in the middle and firing in from 12 yards.
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Revisiting The Home Grown Rule

Last September, I wrote an overly lengthy post which stumbled its way through the then recently ratified rules introducing quotas on numbers of “home grown” players and squad size limits on Premiership teams from 2010/11. The conclusion I eventually came to was that it would not adversely affect Aston Villa in any way. It just took a while to get there.

As we head ever closer toward the start of the 2010/11 season, with much speculation about the likes of Man City suffering as a result of these rule changes, I thought it worth a quick analysis of our squad against the new rules.

The first thing to understand is the definition of “home grown”:-

Premier League
A home grown player is defined as one who, irrespective of his nationality or age, has been registered with any club affiliated to the Football Association or the Welsh Football Association for a period, continuous or not, of three entire seasons or 36 months prior to his 21st birthday (or the end of the season during which he turns 21).

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James Milner Will Be Included In Guadiana Cup Squad Travelling To Portugal

I bet you would have loved to have been a fly on the wall at Bodymoor today, right? Well, the plot thickens. After the James Milner, his agent, Martin O’Neill and Paul Faulkner sat down for talks described as “amicable”, the following statement was issued by the club:-

AVFC Official Site
James Milner trained with the rest of the Villa squad today at Bodymoor Heath. He and the manager, along with chief executive Paul Faulkner and the player’s representative, Matthew Buck, had an amicable conversation and, while James will not play in tomorrow’s game at Walsall, he will fly with the squad to Portugal on Wednesday ahead of the Guadiana Cup in which Villa will compete with Benfica and Feyenoord this weekend.

Perhaps, like fattening the Turkeys before Christmas, it’s in our own interest to keep the player fit before selling him. Or maybe the whole thing has been an elaborate act to fool everyone into thinking he’s leaving, thereby stalling the entire transfer market, before we swoop into action, getting the jump on everyone in the process.

Maybe I shouldn’t think so much. Now, where’s my tinfoil hat?
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