Tottenham Hotspur will name their 25-man squad for the Premier League after the transfer window closes on September 1 and one key man may be left off the list.
All Premier League clubs are allowed to use whichever players they want in their squad for the first few weeks of the season, with clubs not expected to name their final 25-man squad until after the transfer window closes - giving them the ability to add new signings if they wish.
But there are certain rules that every club has to abide by when naming their squads for the campaign ahead.
The rules when naming a 25-man squad:
Every squad must have no more than 17 players deemed as non-homegrown in it.
Every squad should therefore have eight homegrown players in it. For every homegrown player a team does not have, the squad size depreciates by one.
A homegrown player is someone who, irrespective of nationality or age, has been registered with any club affiliated to the Football Association or the Football Association of Wales for a period, continuous or not, of three entire seasons, or 36 months, before his 21st birthday (or the end of the season during which he turns 21).
All U21 players can be left off the squad list and can be used at any time during the season. For the 2026/27 Premier League season, U21 players will have been born on or after January 1, 2005.
With little more than a week until the new Premier League season gets under way, there is still plenty of work to be done when it comes to incoming and outgoing transfers across the board.
And that is no more apparent than at Tottenham Hotspur. Spurs have already made six new signings and allowed eight players to leave.
All of Tottenham's transfer business so far in summer 2026:
Tottenham may have let more players leave than they have signed currently, but at the time of writing, heading into the 2026/27 campaign, they have 28 senior players on the books, with 20 classed as non homegrown and eight homegrown.
Non-homegrown: Guglielmo Vicario, Antonin Kinsky, Martin Dubravka, Andy Robertson, Pedro Porro, Destiny Udogie, Cristian Romero, Micky van de Ven, Marcos Senesi, Jan Paul van Hecke, Kota Takai, Mateus Fernandes, Sandro Tonali, Rodrigo Bentancur, Pape Matar Sarr, Dejan Kulusevski, Mohammed Kudus, Xavi Simons, Wilson Odobert, Richarlison. Homegrown: Brandon Austin, Kevin Danso, Ben Davies, Djed Spence, Conor Gallagher, James Maddison, Dominic Solanke, Dane Scarlett.
As it stands, three of those players would miss out on a place in De Zerbi's Premier League squad.
That may not be too difficult to work out, with Vicario, Romero and Spence all linked with exits from the club this summer and Takai likely to go out on loan.
Those four exits would open up one space in the squad for the season, although De Zerbi has admitted that there are likely to be "two or three" more signings coming into the club. Scarlett could also depart the club this summer, but if three new signings arrive, another player would have to be left off the final squad list for the first half of the campaign.
The big-name player De Zerbi could leave out of his squad
Clubs are permitted to make changes to their squad halfway through the season, to incorporate new signings in the January transfer window, and as a result £52million signing Xavi Simons could be a major omission from the Premier League squad when it is announced a the beginning of September.
Simons suffered an anterior cruciate ligament injury in just De Zerbi's third game in charge in 2025/26. Such an injury will see him miss nine months of action, with his expected return to action being the end of January.
With the Dutchman unlikely to play any part during the first five months of the season, it would make sense to leave him off the squad list to allow any other new signings to take up a spot in the squad instead.
Tottenham remain in talks with Manchester City over a move to sign Brazilian Savinho, while De Zerbi's comments about a "bomba" signing were about someone completely different.