‘More’ is often automatically considered ‘better’ in today’s game.

More matches, more competitions, more teams at those competitions, more matches at those competitions, bigger stadiums, higher revenues, greater profit: more, more, more.

One aspect of the game where that concept doesn’t necessarily apply is the size of squads — or, to be more accurate, the size of squads many managers want to have.

“When you have 20 players and six injuries they say you should have a bigger squad but what happens when I don’t have injuries?” explained Pep Guardiola in 2023. “How can I manage that?
Every new player is a transfer or salary. That’s why when you recruit you look for players who can play in two or three positions. To be effective, you have to be starting regularly.”

Jurgen Klopp agrees: “At a club like Liverpool, you are expected to win pretty much every three days,” he told The Athletic in 2019. “For that, we need more than 11 players so that makes it easier keeping 17 or 18 players happy with appearances. If we had 22 or 23 then it gets more complicated.”

And in 2022, Mikel Arteta set out his stall: “If you ask me what I want, it’s 22 outfield players and three goalkeepers.”

The logic is sound: the fewer players you have, the easier it is to keep more of them happy, creating greater squad harmony. The more often they play, within reason, the more consistent they are in theory. Fewer players also means less work trying to get your message across, as Nuno Espirito Santo explained in 2019: “If it’s the same players, over and over again, training together, passing the ball to each other, timing their runs, all these small details can help. A deep knowledge of your team-mates really helps.”

But times have changed. Football is faster. Greater demands are being placed on players. There are more games and, perhaps more pertinently, more games at the top level. Whoever reaches the Champions League final this season will have played at least two more games, possibly four more, than those who got there in previous seasons. Then there’s the Club World Cup in the United States, at least another three games — for two teams, seven matches — probably in significant heat with plenty of travel involved. Liverpool have already played 41 games this season.

There is less recovery time: if Chelsea reach the Conference League final they will have a full two weeks to unwind, relax and kick back before the Club World Cup starts across the Atlantic. Ballon d’Or holder Rodri, who played 63 games for club and country last season, warned in September that players could go on strike in protest over the number of games they have to play. Five days later, he ruptured his anterior cruciate ligament. In October, the global players union, FIFPro, along with a group of top European leagues, filed a complaint with the European Commission about the increased demands on players.

Thus, logic shifts. More games means more fatigue, increased risk of injury and a greater need to rotate — you need more players, a bigger squad.

The opinion seems to be shifting. On transfer deadline day, Guardiola was asked about the possibility of shipping out James McAtee, a fringe player who has played under 100 minutes of Premier League football this season. ”I don’t think so, he is going to stay,” Guardiola said. “We don’t have enough players, we have a World Cup at the end of the season, we have a lot of games.”

McAtee, who scored a hat-trick against Salford in the FA Cup in January, has stayed at City despite a lack of playing time (Gareth Copley/Getty Images)

Arteta has revised his view, too. He told the media last week that his ideal squad size was “always 23 or 24 outfield (players) and four goalkeepers”. A small shift, but notable all the same.

Managers might prefer to work with fewer players but is it possible to have a small Premier League squad in 2025?

There is not a simple answer to this question. The slightly long response is: not really, but you could get away with it if a pretty specific set of circumstances presents itself — you have the right style of play, you don’t get too many injuries, you haven’t signed too many players and you have quite a bit of luck.

Around two-thirds of the way through the season, the team to have used the fewest players in Premier League games is Nottingham Forest, with 23. Liverpool, Arsenal and Newcastle United have used 24. At the other end of the scale, Southampton have used 33 and Ipswich Town 32.

There’s an immediate pattern: the teams towards the top of the table have used fewer players and those at the bottom have used more, which seems logical: if you keep winning games, you’re more likely to stick with the same players, rather than chopping and changing in search of results.

The other common ground is increased reticence in the transfer market. Liverpool only brought in one player across the summer and winter transfer windows, Arsenal added two and Newcastle recruited four new senior players (two of whom were reserve goalkeepers and one, William Osula, being a 21-year-old backup forward). Forest signed eight in the summer but by their recent standards, that qualifies as keeping their powder fairly dry.

Ipswich and Southampton, on the other hand, had to tool up after promotion, and have recruited more than 30 players between them. Even with so many incomings, you’ll need to play most of them and try out different combinations to get your team right. If you want to operate with a small, stable squad, restraint in the market is important.

The picture changes slightly when you look beyond the Premier League and the games in all competitions start to rack up.

You might logically think that playing more games is a barrier to a bijou squad, with the need for rotation necessitating reinforcements. That is borne out in the facts: the seven teams involved in Europe, who have thus all played 37 or more games in all competitions (the next most is 33), have all used more than the average number of players, which is 30.6, apart from Manchester United, who have used 30.

Chelsea, essentially operating with different teams for European and domestic games this season, have called upon 36 players. At the other end of the scale, Forest, whose early exit from the Carabao Cup means nobody has played fewer than their 28 games, have required just 26 players.

But it doesn’t entirely track: Liverpool have played 41 games, but have called upon 31 players, which is fewer than Brighton (30 games), as well as Southampton and Ipswich, who have both only played 28 games but have still got through 37 and 33 players.

So if the number of games you play doesn’t necessarily correlate with the size of your player pool, does how you play have an impact?

Logically, you would think the teams that run more (or, specifically, sprint more) would have a greater churn of players — more fatigue, greater risk of injury — but that’s not necessarily the case.

This chart plots the distance that teams run at high speed, measured through data provided by Skillcorner, against the number of players used. Once more, Forest are an extreme case, with the lowest high-speed distance and the fewest players. Tottenham Hotspur run the most and have used the third-most players in the Premier League — but beyond that, there isn’t much of a correlation. Newcastle, Everton and Liverpool sprint a lot but haven’t used many players, whereas Southampton and Ipswich don’t sprint much and, as we’ve established, use lots of players.

Another method of measuring this is how aggressively teams press. The generally accepted method of gauging this is passes per defensive action (PPDA) — the fewer passes a team allows their opponents to make before they intervene, the more aggressive their press.

Again, some examples suggest a correlation, but it’s not consistent. Hello again to Forest, who press less than anyone else (PPDA of 15.36) and have used the fewest players in the Premier League, and greetings to Tottenham, who are second in the PPDA rankings (8.73) and have used the third-most.

But Arsenal press more than them and have only used one more player than Forest, while Ipswich are third-bottom of the pressing table but second in the most players deployed rankings.

Finally, the most obvious factor in needing a bulkier squad is, you would logically think, injuries.

That is broadly represented in the statistics, but not entirely. According to figures provided by Ben Dinnery, who runs premierinjuries.com, Brighton have suffered the most separate injuries (30) that have led to a player missing a Premier League game while Tottenham (28) are next. Those two teams are pretty high up in the ‘players used’ stakes, having employed 30 and 31 in the league. Again, at the other end of things, we find our old friends, Forest, who have got away with just nine injuries that have caused a player to miss a league game.

Nuno’s Forest have only suffered nine injuries (MI News/NurPhoto via Getty Images)

Arsenal, having suffered the fourth-most injuries but using only 24 players in the league, are among the anomalies but, as a rule, the teams who have suffered fewer injuries have used fewer players.

The statistics don’t show everything. Using more players might be an active choice, independent of all the factors outlined here. Luck is also a factor, a mystical shield that potentially protects your players from harm and thus allows you to keep your pool of players small.

But is there already a shift in attitudes towards squad sizes? If we say, based on the words of Guardiola, Arteta and Klopp, that the ‘ideal’ Premier League squad size is roughly 23 players, with a group of youngsters behind them for emergencies and cup competitions, only four teams have stuck to that number this season. Most other teams have, by accident or design, used plenty more than that.

It’s also possible that the whole thing is a chimera, that while managers might wistfully dream of a utopia where they only use 23 or 24 players, it’s never actually been real. The lowest number of players a team used last season was 25. Examples exist of teams using fewer in previous seasons but they’re relatively rare.

Might there be more administrative changes that will increase squad sizes? Teams can name a maximum of 25 players in their Premier League squads, with as many additional under-21 players as you like, but that could increase.

After all, squad sizes at international tournaments have gone up from 23 to 26 and since the Premier League began, the number of players you’re allowed to have on the bench each game has increased from three to five to seven and now nine. The authorities’ solution to the complaint that ‘there are too many games’ may well just be ‘have more players then! Problem solved!’.

Classic football: the answer to ‘too much’ may be ‘more’.

That’s for the future. For now, is it possible to have a small squad in the Premier League? Yes, but probably not by design, or not that you can realistically plan for. If you win a lot, don’t buy too many players, don’t have too many games to play, don’t have a particularly demanding playing style and avoid getting too many injuries, then you could end up like Nottingham Forest with a limited group. But that’s a remarkable confluence of circumstances, most of which influence each other: you might plan for all that to break your way, but the chances of it working are pretty slim.

On that basis, minimalist managers who want to keep their groups small might have to resign themselves to reality.

 (Top photo: MI News/NurPhoto via Getty Images)