Arsenal are running out of homegrown players given the imminent departures of Aaron Ramsey and Danny Welbeck, which may mean they go into next season with a reduced squad.

Arsenal v Brentford - Carabao Cup Third Round
LONDON, ENGLAND – SEPTEMBER 26: Danny Welbeck of Arsenal celebrates after he scores his sides second goal during the Carabao Cup Third Round match between Arsenal and Brentford at Emirates Stadium on September 26, 2018, in London, England. (Photo by Shaun Botterill/Getty Images)

With Welbeck and Ramsey leaving, Ainsley Maitland-Niles now over 21 and Calum Chambers, Matt Macey and Emi Martinez returning from loan spells, there is set to be a significant reshuffle in Arsenal’s homegrown spots for the 2019/20 season.

To briefly explain the rule, you can only have a maximum of 17 non-homegrown players in your 25-man squad. This doesn’t include u21s (for next season that means players born on or after 1st January 1998), you can have as many as you want of those.

A homegrown player is someone who has been registered with an FA or FA Wales club for a period of three entire seasons before his 21st birthday. As a result, this is Arsenal’s list of homegrown players ahead of next season:

  1. Hector Bellerin
  2. Rob Holding
  3. Deyan Iliev
  4. Alex Iwobi
  5. Carl Jenkinson
  6. Emi Martinez
  7. Ainsley Maitland-Niles
  8. Calum Chambers
  9. Matt Macey

Meanwhile, here’s Arsenal’s list of non-homegrown players (assuming Cohen Bramall and Stephan Lichtsteiner leave, as expected):

  1. Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang
  2. Mohamed Elneny
  3. Sead Kolasinac
  4. Laurent Koscielny
  5. Alexandre Lacazette
  6. Bernd Leno
  7. Henrikh Mkhitaryan
  8. Nacho Monreal
  9. Shkodran Mustafi
  10. Mesut Özil
  11. Sokratis Papastathopoulos
  12. Lucas Torreira
  13. Granit Xhaka
  14. David Ospina
  15. Takuma Asano
  16. Konstantinos Mavropanos

That means Arsenal can only make one non-homegrown signing before they run out of room. At that point, they’d have to sell (or leave a player in the reserves) before they could sign anyone new.

With a number of players on the homegrown list seemingly set to leave (Macey, Iliev, Jenkinson, Chambers), the Gunners definitely need to be looking into replacing them. Otherwise, their main squad list will reduce below the maximum of 25 for every homegrown player that leaves.

The club could just put faith in the u21s to fill those gaps, but Unai Emery has rarely done so with the academy players this season.