Should there be a cap on squad size?

I was just reading about Portsmouth signing Distin and Muntari and also being interested in Bramble and some others. It got me thinking - do you think the Premier League should follow the steps of UEFA and the Spanish league, for example, and limit the registered squad of a club to say, 25 players? If there is an injury crisis during the season then the club can only use additional players from their youth teams.

What does everyone think of this idea? It obviously won't be a problem for most clubs, but it'll prevent some teams (esp. midtable/relegation scrapping teams like West Ham this year, Portsmouth last year, any of Redknapp's teams, even Liverpool if I'm not mistaken, Sunderland last year, etc.) simply stocking as many players as possible in a scatter gun approach. This tends to be especially detrimental to youth development because most of these unused squad players tend to be cheap or loan signings from abroad.

defo. end of story.

If your looking for ridiculous size squads then look no further than Inter.

I honestly doubt that any EPL teams have more than 25 first teamers

Tweedle wrote:

I honestly doubt that any EPL teams have more than 25 first teamers

Most teams leave themself with 22 - 25 players and send all the surplus on loan.

This would arguably be a better way of encouraging youth development than a 'must have 5 home-grown players' rule - because your youth players would be your 2nd choice backup.

So maybe it should be further reduced to 22 (most clubs have their youth keeper as 3rd choice anyway) to be more effective...

Yeah seems fair, maybe 23 as the limit though. 2 for every position, then one extra for goalkeeper.