Mikel Arteta has publicly asked Premier League decision makers to expand matchday squads so more professionals can remain involved each weekend. He argued that raising the number of outfield players from 18 to 20 would ease the psychological burden on those excluded from selection.<\/p>\n
\u201cNext season, instead of 18 outfield players, hopefully, it will do 20,\u201d the Arsenal boss told assembled media on Friday morning. \u201cI beg them from here, like it\u2019s in the Champions League, because it\u2019s much better to manage the squad, to maintain the value of the players, to maintain the mental health of the players, because nobody wants to get [left] out of the squad.\u201d<\/p>\n
Arteta added: \u201cIt doesn\u2019t make a lot of sense to restrict [squad sizes],\u201d and added, \u201cI think it\u2019s better for absolutely everybody. That\u2019s my opinion.\u201d His instant logic is clear: a larger matchday list lets a manager use more options to influence a game and manage minutes.<\/p>\n
The appeal is particularly relevant given the current distribution of squad market values. Transfermarkt data ranks Arsenal top with an average squad market value of \u00a345.7 million, followed by Manchester City (\u00a339.2m), Liverpool (\u00a334.7m), Chelsea (\u00a332.1m) and Tottenham (\u00a326.2m). The list continues through to Burnley at \u00a37.5m. That disparity underlines the argument that the five-substitute era and larger benches have tended to favour clubs with deeper resources.<\/p>\n
Sean Dyche captured that criticism when the extra substitutions first arrived. \u201cI think it quite obviously favours the big clubs because they can keep more players happy and more players involved by making more changes,\u201d he sniffed in 2020.<\/p>\n
Arteta acknowledged the human cost of selection decisions, noting the weekly reality managers face. \u201cWe have a really unique job, which is we have the ability to transform somebody\u2019s life, career, which is great,\u201d he reflected. \u201cBut as well, every week we have to tell somebody, \u2018Tomorrow you don\u2019t do the job. You\u2019re not even allowed to travel with the team.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n
That tension between squad management and individual welfare is central to the case Arteta has presented to the league.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Arteta has asked for matchday squads to grow so, more players keep hope and mental well-being today.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":6338,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[192,172],"tags":[1305,1304],"class_list":["post-6339","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-arsenal","category-epl","tag-bench-selection","tag-benching"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6339","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6339"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6339\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/6338"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6339"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6339"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6339"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}