Manchester City, Tottenham Hotspur and Aston Villa face a headache when it comes to registering the players they brought in during the January window.
UEFA rules stipulate that teams in the various competitions can only add a maximum three new players into their knockout stage squad from their league phase roster.
And they all have a deadline of midnight on Thursday, February 6
City were the Premier League’s biggest spenders, splashing £176.1m on four new faces.
Villa had five new arrivals, including three loan signings. The most high-profile was Marcus Rashford, who joined from Manchester United on loan.
Spurs made three January signings, but their situation is further damaged by an injury crisis and a lack of homegrown players in their squad.
Nico Gonzalez, Abdukodir Khusanov, Vitor Reis and Omar Marmoush were all signed by City and all of them would need to go into List A.
But not enough City players from List A left the club to account for all five being registered. So Guardiola would have to decide which two of them he has to leave out for Champions League games only.
Aston Villa’s situation is different. They signed five players and allowed six from their List A leave.
Under the rules, they can register four players out of Rashford, Donyell Malen, Andres Garcia, Marco Asensio and Axel Disasi. One, however, will have to miss out.
Tottenham failed to meet the homegrown quota at the start of the season, because they only named two ‘locally trained’ players in Brandon Austin and Alfie Whiteman. They needed at least four.
As a result, because they were two players short, they named a squad of just 23 players for the Europa League league phase. That meant Djed Spence and Sergio Reguilon were not named in their league phase squad.
Like City, Spurs can only register three new players into their knockout stage squad and they could pick their three January signings in Kevin Danso, Antonin Kinsky and Mathys Tel. But they would need to replace current players in the Spurs squad, as their current 23-player roster is full.