
Premier League Champions Manchester City, Tottenham Hotspur and Aston Villa are facing a lot of pressure when it comes to registration of the new players they bought during the January transfer window.
UEFA governing body rules stipulated that teams in the various competitions of the continent can only register maximum of three new players into their knockout stage squad from their league phase roster.
Whereas the deadline for the submission is the midnight of Thursday, February 6, 2024
Pep Guardiola’s Manchester City were the Premier League’s biggest spenders in this January window after splashing £176.1m on four new players
Meanwhile Aston Villa had five new players arrived to Villa Park, including three loan signings. The most high-profile was Marcus Rashford, who joined Unai Emery’s team from Manchester United on loan.
Another Premier League club, Tottenham Hotspurs made three signings in just concluded transfer window, but their situation is further complicated by an injury crisis and a lack of homegrown players in their squad.
Nico Gonzalez, Abdukodir Khusanov, Vitor Reis and Omar Marmoush were all signed by City and all of them would need to go into List A.
But not enough City players from List A left the club to account for all five being registered. So Guardiola would have to decide which two of them he has to leave out for Champions League games only.
Aston Villa’s situation is clearly different. They signed five players but allowed six from their List A leave.
Under the rules, they can register four players out of Rashford, Donyell Malen, Andres Garcia, Marco Asensio and Axel Disasi. One, however, will have to miss out.
Spurs failed to meet the homegrown quota at the start of the season, because they only named two ‘locally trained’ players in Brandon Austin and Alfie Whiteman. They needed at least four.
As a result, because they were two players short, they named a squad of just 23 players for the Europa League league phase. That meant Djed Spence and Sergio Reguilon were not named in their league phase squad.
Like City, Spurs can only register three new players into their knockout stage squad and they could pick their three January signings in Kevin Danso, Antonin Kinsky and Mathys Tel. But they would need to replace current players in the Spurs squad, as their current 23-player roster is full.