Afternoon guys, I can actually type which makes quite a change today.

It has literally just been announced that Adebayor has been hit with two FA charges, one for his stamp on van Persie, the other being his celebration.

He is fast heading for a six match ban, personally, I would add another couple of games onto the ban for City’s ridiculous defence of him. Mark Hughes claimed that he wasn’t actually running towards our fans…

Robin van Persie’s celebration is also being investigated because a City fan has claimed that he mouthed a swear word towards the City fans. An eye for an eye I suppose, I don’t see how swear words could kick off a riot and its not like he ran the entire length of the field celebrating is it.

Onto the rule changes by the Premier League then, the statement read as follows:

“As of next season clubs will be required to have a squad named of up to 25 players, of which no more than 17 can be over the age of 21 and not home grown,” Scudamore said.

“The definition of home grown is trained for three years under the age of 21 by somebody in the English and Welsh professional system.

“Clubs will have to declare their 25 at the end of August when the window shuts and then again at the end of January.”

I think its a good rule to bring in, we pass it with ease but Chelsea and Liverpool do not have quite so much breathing space. Presumably the quota has been brought in to try and improve the standard of English players for the benefit of the national team, whilst also stopping clubs such as Citeh stockpiling tons of experienced footballers.

The Premier Leagues reasoning for the rule changes are:

“It’s not in the club’s interests to stockpile players. It will make buying home-grown talent more attractive,

“We’re not going down the route of a nationality test but what this will mean is that you just can’t buy a team from abroad.

“We think it will give clubs an extra incentive to invest in youth. We think that one of the benefits will be that it will help the England team.”

I echo Arseblog‘s thoughts on this when he says it may well inflate the English market even further, the price of English players is so inflated that out of 100 million you could only get Lescott, Barry, Rooney and Ferdinand. You could get players of that quality or better from another nationality for a fraction of the price.

Looking forward to Wednesday night it seems we will be missing Almunia, Denilson and van Persie from the squad, there will be more on that and the importance of the game tomorrow.

’till then.