4 Jun 2009Birmingham City chairman backs squad limit idea

Football Leagues/ Association and Governance

The introduction of a limit to the number of players an English Premier League club should be able to have in their squads has been backed by Birmingham City chairman David Gold, the Guardian has reported.

All the chairmen and chief executives of the 20 clubs are due at the league's annual meeting today to discuss the idea of how to best implement the move to ensure that a certain number of homegrown players are featured in a squad.

UEFA already implements a limit of 25 players in European club competitions and Gold believes that a similar move in the Premier League and Europe's other top divisions could help to make them more competitive.

He told the publication: "I welcome squad size reduction. This has to be a European situation. You can't have controlled squad sizes in the Premier League and not in the Spanish, Italian and German leagues, how would that work?

"We'd control squad sizes in effect to reduce the competitiveness of our big clubs playing in Europe."

He added that he felt 14 clubs would need to vote in favour of the move and that the so-called top four would be among those to decide against it.

Birmingham City gained promotion back to the Premier League from the Championship this season alongside Wolverhampton Wanderers and Burnley.

Written by Tom Jenkins

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