The 2011/12 Arsenal squad looks to be the biggest ever « Untold Arsenal: Arsenal News, supporting the club, the players and the manager
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By Tony Attwood
Updating the squad list for the coming season is in some ways easy – after all we have seen the team put out by Mr Wenger in the pre-season friendlies and from this we can start to put together our 25 player list.
But to get a full picture we must also take into account the 2011 FIFA U-20 World Cup being played between 29 July and 20 August 2011 in Columbia and there are a couple of youngsters there too – most notably Francis Coquelin. Even when the games are over they will then presumably need time to rest before coming back for possible league cup or reserve league matches.
Following my earlier article on this topic, and the suggestions made by readers we have got to this stage:
Our over 21s…
1: Andrey Arshavin 2: Marouane Chamakh 3: Abou Diaby 4 Emmanuel Eboue (subject it seems to a transfer bid at the moment) 5 Lukasz Fabianski 6 Laurent Koscielny 7 Samir Nasri 8 Tomas Rosicky 9 Bacary Sagna 10 Robin van Persie 11 Thomas Vermaelen 12 Sebastien Squillaci
13. Gervinho
Our home grown over 21 are
1 Johan Djourou 2 Cesc Fabregas 3 Vito Mannone 4 Alex Song 5 Keiran Gibbs 6 Theo Walcott 7 Armand Traore
8 Carlos Vela
Under 21s who will be part of the squad
- Emmanuel Frimpong
- Wojciech Szczesny
- Carl Jenkinson
- Jack Wilshere
- Aaron Ramsey
After this it becomes a bit more speculative and of course these are just my opinions thus far:
Under 21 players who might become part of the squad this season
- Francis Coquelin (playing in the under 20 world cup)
- Henri Lansbury
- Ignasi Miquel
- Conor Henderson
- Kyle Bartley
Players subject to passport issues
Others on the outer fringe:
- Gilles Sunu (playing in the under 20 world cup)
- Samuel Galindo
- Luke Freeman
- Sanchez Watt
- Oguzhan Ozyakup
Leaving
- Denilson – to Brazil on loan
- Clichy – to Man City
- Bendtner
- Almunia
- Jay Emanuel Thomas (this is just a suspicion, but he has not been included in the first team outings this summer, and Young Guns blog which knows everything suggests he could be going)
- Jamie Edge and Steven Smith from the reserves
- Rhys Murphy (which shows what I know, as I really thought he was going to make it, but again Young Guns blog is saying he is going) However a loan is possible, but only as a last resort.
- Mark Randall, Thomas Cruise and Roarie Deacon have already gone
Loan
- Wellington Silva – now with Levante, getting games and scoring which is a huge improvement on last season.
- Pedro Botelho – last I heard (via Young Guns Blog, where else) he failed to join Levante, and is now joining Rayo Vallecano on loan. He has had four loan spells in Spain, the last with FC Cartagena which was deemed a success, but Mr Wenger apparently wants him to have experience in La Liga.
- James Shea on loan for next season with Dagenham (source – as above).
Possible transfer back on
- Campbell (Costa Rican, Irish parent or grandparent which might make it ok, but I don’t know enough about nationality and passport laws to say for sure if he can become an EU citizen). His transfer was called off at the last moment, without explanation, but rumours suggest it might be back on – which again suggests that the passport is the big issue. Certainly after the Edu issue some years ago Arsenal are not going to allow an agent to assert the passport issue is solved, without fully checking.
Totals
Of our 25 registered players we currently only have 21, but have easily enough home grown players, so in effect could sign four more players who are not home-grown.
With the five under 21s who are clearly in the frame we have 26 players. Add in the five fringe players (any of whom might step up) and the “passport” player and that takes us to 32.
Missing players
Then there are the missing players. I always miss players when I do this, so please fill in the gaps and update the details.
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