Liverpool have submitted their squad for the first half of the Premier League season, and it includes two players over the age of 21 who’ve yet to play competitively for the club.
The Reds confirmed the list on their official website on Tuesday, with 22 of the 25 permitted berths used (excluding under-21s, who don’t need to be registered among the quota of senior players).
It means that the likes of Ryan Gravenberch, Harvey Elliott, Stefan Bajcetic and Ben Doak can be classified outside the main squad list, although a couple of 22-year-olds who seem far less likely to feature for the first team are included among the senior selection.
Vitezslav Jaros and Paul Glatzel are two of the six ‘homegrown’ players who could feature for Liverpool in the Premier League this season, with that classification covering anyone born before 2002 who has been registered with a club affiliated to the English or Welsh FAs for a minimum of three years before their 21st birthday.
Despite being allowed a squad of 25, clubs can only name a maximum of 17 ‘non-homegrown’ senior players for the Premier League, hence why Liverpool haven’t used their full complement overall.
The only way in which Jaros and Glatzel could be included was to name them among the main squad, although Jurgen Klopp had the scope to do so given that there were only four other ‘homegrown’ slots taken (by Trent Alexander-Arnold, Caoimhin Kelleher, Joe Gomez and Curtis Jones).
The Czech goalkeeper has been a regular feature at underage level for the Reds in recent years but is still awaiting a senior debut for the club, with four games as an unused substitute the closest he’s come to a breakthrough (Transfermarkt).
As for Glatzel, he’s yet to even make a first-team matchday squad for Liverpool (Transfermarkt), but that surely wouldn’t be the case had it not been for a series of devastating injury blows, the latest of which was suffered while on loan at Tranmere last term.
The striker who was so prolific in the FA Youth Cup-winning campaign of 2019 seemed to be on the cusp of making Klopp’s team later that year, having featured in pre-season that summer, only for fate to deal him a horrendously cruel hand.
Both he and Jaros are set to be peripheral players at best in the Premier League over the next few months, but it’s a show of faith by the club to include both as potential top-flight options should the need or opportunity arise for them to feature.
#Ep89 of The Empire of the Kop Podcast: EOTK Insider with Neil Jones🎙️