What Morgan Gibbs-White and Mohammed Kudus transfers mean for Tottenham homegrown problem

Tottenham Hotspur's new arrivals will bolster Thomas Frank's squad for the coming season but what will them mean for the club's squad issues?

Spurs sealed a £55million move for West Ham attacker Mohammed Kudus on Thursday after completing a £5million transfer earlier this week for Japan international centre-back Kota Takai from Kawasaki Frontale.

Tottenham were set to trigger a £60million release clause for Morgan Gibbs-White with a medical to be held on Friday. However, the transfer has hit what is hoped to be a temporary road block as Forest have cut off communications at this time as they believe they did not give permission for the north London club to approach the 25-year-old England international despite the release clause.

Forest are also said to believe the confidentiality of the release clause has been breached as Spurs' approach for Gibbs-White was precisely what was required. football.london understands Tottenham remain hopeful of proceeding with the deal and while a delay appears inevitable at the least, there is also a feeling among some at Forest that they could be powerless to stop the transfer should Spurs do it all through the proper channels.

So if that deal goes through and the transfer business under Frank reaches £150million, including Mathys Tel's loan move being made permanent from Bayern Munich, then how does it affect Spurs' long-standing squad issues that has seen players left out every season from their European squad?

Here's what it means for both their Premier League and Champions League squads if Gibbs-White does complete his move.

Premier League

So Fraser Forster, Timo Werner, Alfie Whiteman, Sergio Reguilon and Alejo Veliz can all come out of the squad. However, there is another issue because three players must come out of the Under-21s list and into the main lists, namely Antonin Kinsky, Josh Keeley and Matthew Craig.

We can assume that Craig will not be part of the first team squad this season so we're not going to include him here.

There is still space here for the new signings though, especially when you look at players who are unlikely to be at the club next season. That's mainly because a club's Under-21 players do not need to be included on their 25-man squad list yet are eligible to play in the Premier League.

To be considered an Under-21 player for this current Premier League season, players must have been born on or after January 1, 2004. That means Tel and Takai do not have to be registered in the main squad and neither will Luka Vuskovic, nor the returning Yang Min-hyeok.

It also appears that Danso qualifies as a homegrown player in Premier League terms because he was in the youth academies at Reading and MK Dons for years before leaving England at the age of 16 and later returning for a season at Southampton.

The Premier League rules state that "a 'Home Grown Player' means a player who, irrespective of nationality or age, has been registered with any club affiliated to The Football Association or the Football Association of Wales for a period, continuous or not, of three entire seasons, or 36 months, before his 21st birthday (or the end of the season during which he turns 21)."

With that in mind, here's how the club's Premier League squad looks right now, including players returning from loan and before anyone else leaves. It shows that players must leave before any more can be registered, unless they are in the under-21 bracket.

Premier League non-homegrown players (17 currently, 17 maximum allowed): Guglielmo Vicario, Antonin Kinsky, Pedro Porro, Radu Dragusin, Destiny Udogie, Cristian Romero, Micky van de Ven, Rodrigo Bentancur, Yves Bissouma, Dejan Kulusevski, Richarlison, Son Heung-min, Pape Matar Sarr, Manor Solomon, Bryan Gil, Josh Keeley, Mohammed Kudus.

Premier League homegrown players (8 currently and eight minimum required): Dominic Solanke, Kevin Danso, Brandon Austin, Ben Davies, James Maddison, Brennan Johnson, Djed Spence, Morgan Gibbs-White.

Notable Under-21s players: Kota Takai, Archie Gray, Lucas Bergvall, Wilson Odobert, Mathys Tel, Dane Scarlett, Yang-min Hyeok, Luka Vuskovic, Ashley Phillips, Alfie Devine, Jamie Donley, Alfie Dorrington.

Champions League

This is the part where it all gets very messy. It's an area that has been a constant problem for Spurs and will continue to be for a while longer until the recent batch of 18-year-old signings eventually become B list players after two years and then club-trained players three years down the line from when they joined.

The major issue in the Champions League, as it was in the Europa League, lies in the fact that UEFA's rules state that no club can have more than 25 players on their A-List during the season, of whom at least two must be goalkeepers. The rules then say that "as a minimum, eight of those 25 places are reserved exclusively for 'locally trained players' and no club may have more than four 'association-trained players' listed among those eight places. If a club have fewer than eight locally trained players in their squad, then the maximum number of players on List A is reduced accordingly".

What is a locally-trained player you might ask? Well, there are two different kinds. One are 'club-trained players', those on a club's books for three entire seasons or 36 months between the ages of 15 and 21. The other are 'association-trained players', who were on another club's books in the same association for three entire seasons or 36 months between the ages of 15 and 21. Danso will not fit into that latter category because he left England at the age of 16.

Then there is a B-List for players born on, or after, January 1, 2004 and who have been eligible to play for the club for any uninterrupted period of two years since their 15th birthday – or for a total of three consecutive years with a maximum of one loan period to a club from the same association for a period not longer than one year. Players aged 16 may be submitted if they have been registered with the club for the previous two years without interruption.

So with all that in mind, Spurs' Champions League squad in its current state is bloated and running over in both non-locally trained spots and association trained ones.

That they only have one club-trained player in goalkeeper Brandon Austin now when they need to register four, means Tottenham would have to leave three spots open in what should be a 25-man squad, but instead becomes a 22-man one.

Players like Dane Scarlett, Jamie Donley and Alfie Devine could go on the B list if required as they meet those requirements. There's no point putting them in the club-trained players spots really because they don't need to.

So with the addition of Takai and Kudus, Spurs have 24 players to fit into 17 non-locally trained spots and eight association-trained players for four other spots if we're including Gibbs-White. Any association-trained players over those four spots would need to be crowbarred into the main group.

The simplest way to look at it is that Spurs would have 32 senior players to fit into 21 spots, keeping Austin aside, and that's before they even try to sign new players this window.

Tottenham need to get plenty of players out of the door this summer and that's why you could well see some surprise departures in the weeks ahead and expected ones, plus loans aplenty or players having to face being left out of the Champions League squad for the knockout stages at least.

Spurs need a bigger squad to compete in all four competitions but they just don't have the club-trained numbers to make that work in Europe.

European non-locally trained players (24 currently, 17 maximum): Guglielmo Vicario, Antonin Kinsky, Pedro Porro, Kevin Danso, Radu Dragusin, Destiny Udogie, Cristian Romero, Micky van de Ven, Rodrigo Bentancur, Yves Bissouma, Wilson Odobert, Dejan Kulusevski, Richarlison, Son Heung-min, Pape Matar Sarr, Lucas Bergvall, Mathys Tel, Manor Solomon, Bryan Gil, Yang-min Hyeok, Luka Vuskovic, Josh Keeley, Kota Takai, Mohammed Kudus.

Association trained players (8 currently, four can be used in exclusive slots): Dominic Solanke, Ben Davies, James Maddison, Brennan Johnson, Djed Spence, Archie Gray, Ashley Phillips, Morgan Gibbs-White.

Club trained players (1 currently, four required): Brandon Austin.

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