{"id":874692,"date":"2026-08-31T06:14:15","date_gmt":"2026-08-31T06:14:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/874692\/"},"modified":"2026-08-31T06:14:15","modified_gmt":"2026-08-31T06:14:15","slug":"mikel-arteta-begging-premier-league-to-expand-20-man-matchday-squads-arsenal","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/874692\/","title":{"rendered":"Mikel Arteta \u2018begging\u2019 Premier League to expand 20-man matchday squads | Arsenal"},"content":{"rendered":"

Arsenal have asked the Premier League<\/a> to increase the size of matchday squads, with Mikel Arteta saying the current system is detrimental to player welfare. Top\u2011flight clubs can name 20 players for games, including a minimum of three homegrown players. In Spain\u2019s La Liga, clubs can name a matchday squad of 23, while Italy\u2019s Serie A allows 25.<\/p>\n

Arsenal have competed on multiple fronts in recent seasons. Last year, as well as winning the Premier League, they reached the finals of the Champions League<\/a> and Carabao Cup<\/a>, as well as the quarter-finals of the FA Cup. With pressure increasing on the football calendar and players facing more matches, Arteta sees no reason why English teams should operate with smaller squads than those from other European leagues.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019ve been begging the Premier League if we can extend those numbers just for the welfare of the players, which is the most important thing, because I think every squad needs more than 20 outfield players, ideally, to sustain the level of demand in international games that we have,\u201d Arteta said, as he prepares for the champions\u2019 trip to Aston Villa on Monday night. \u201cBut these are the rules, and within the rules we have to play. We need to be very close to the players to explain those situations in the right way, for everybody to feel important, because they will be.\u201d<\/p>\n

Clubs can register a squad of 25 senior players \u2013 those aged over 21 \u2013 for the season, with at least eight homegrown. As a result, five senior players registered for the season miss out each game. Arteta has said it can be difficult to tell players they are not involved and that the news can negatively affect their wellbeing.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe question has to be to the players. What do they want? If they raise their hands and say: \u2018No, I prefer to stay at home and not travel,\u2019 I think we have an issue because then they don\u2019t love what they do, which is the matchday,\u201d he said. \u201cBut I\u2019m sure that if you ask the players, everybody would like to be part of the squad on matchday, because that\u2019s the way that they can fulfil themselves.<\/p>\n

\u201cOtherwise you have to tell somebody: \u2018You are not even part of this matchday,\u2019 and that\u2019s really tough. And it doesn\u2019t help anybody. It doesn\u2019t help the club. It doesn\u2019t help the valuation of the player. It doesn\u2019t help the player feel part of something. It\u2019s a real issue that has a really simple solution.\u201d<\/p>\n

Arteta added: \u201cAnd all the clubs, because I\u2019ve done the research with all the top clubs in Europe, we are not different to anybody. Most of them, 90% of them, they have more players than us. So we are going to have to deal with that.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Arsenal have asked the Premier League to increase the size of matchday squads, with Mikel Arteta saying the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":874693,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[563],"tags":[64,63,596,85],"class_list":["post-874692","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-football","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-football","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/874692","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=874692"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/874692\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/874693"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=874692"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=874692"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=874692"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}