If you were asked which Premier League clubs relied most heavily on home-grown players in 2025/26, Chelsea or Manchester City might seem obvious answers. Both have prominent academies, and both featured heavily in a separate study of academy-graduate minutes.
But that is not what the Premier League’s Home Grown Player rule measures.
FIVDA’s analysis of the official Premier League registration lists and completed-season FBref minutes found Leeds at the top of a very different table. Senior Home Grown Players supplied 21,063 league minutes for Leeds, representing 56.1% of the club’s recorded player-minutes. Everton were close behind at 54.2%.
Chelsea? 30.8%.
Manchester City? Just 12.6%.
The difference is not a contradiction. It exposes something important about what “home-grown” actually means in Premier League squad building.
Home-grown does not mean academy-developed
The first distinction is the most important. A Home Grown Player is not necessarily English, British or developed by his current club.
Under the Premier League definition, a Home Grown Player is someone who, regardless of nationality or age, was registered with one or more clubs affiliated to the FA or the Football Association of Wales for three entire seasons, or 36 months, before the end of the season in which he turned 21.
That wording matters. The player does not have to spend those three years at the Premier League club he currently represents, and they do not have to come through that club’s academy. The qualifying period can be accumulated with other affiliated clubs. Equally, being English does not automatically make somebody home-grown: it is the player’s registration history during those formative years that determines whether he qualifies.
The rule then affects how a Premier League club can construct its senior squad. The Premier League’s 2025/26 squad rules allowed a maximum senior list of 25 players, with no more than 17 who did not meet the Home Grown Player criteria. In practical terms, a club wanting to use all 25 senior places therefore needed at least eight HGPs. Eligible U21 players were treated separately and did not have to occupy one of those 25 senior places.
This is why “home-grown” can be misleading in everyday football language. It sounds as though it describes players a club has produced itself. In registration terms, it describes players whose development history meets a specific time-based criterion within the English or Welsh football system.
That changes the question we should ask of the data.
Instead of asking which clubs produced the most young players, FIVDA examined how much Premier League playing time clubs actually received from senior players formally designated as HGPs on the official 2025/26 registration lists.
Leeds and Everton built around their senior HGPs
Leeds led the league with 21,063 senior-HGP minutes, equivalent to 56.1% of their recorded Premier League player-minutes. Everton followed with 20,342 minutes and 54.2%, while Newcastle were third at 18,482 and 49.3%, according to FIVDA’s calculation from the Premier League squad lists and FBref playing-time data.
Figure 1 — Senior Home-Grown Player Minute Share
The scale of that reliance becomes clearer further down the table. Arsenal received 42.7% of their recorded minutes from senior HGPs, while Chelsea were at 30.8%. Manchester City and Liverpool were both at 12.6%, with Sunderland lowest in this analysis at 9.2%.
Those figures do not rank the quality of each club’s recruitment or development system. They measure something narrower: how much of the first team’s actual league playing time came from senior players occupying the formal HGP category.
For Leeds and Everton, the answer was more than half. For Leeds, that dependence came in their first Premier League season after winning promotion from the Championship, adding another layer to how the promoted squad was constructed for the step up.
The difference was about depth as well as minutes
A large HGP share could theoretically be driven by a handful of players carrying enormous workloads. Leeds’ numbers show something broader.
Nine of their senior HGPs played at least 1,000 Premier League minutes, with five exceeding 2,000. Everton also had five above 2,000 and eight above 1,000. Newcastle went even deeper at the lower threshold, with ten senior HGPs reaching 1,000 minutes, although only two passed 2,000.
Figure 2 — How Deep Was the HGP Contribution?
Again, the contrast with some clubs lower down the overall table is substantial. Chelsea had five senior HGPs above 1,000 minutes and two above 2,000. Manchester City had two above 1,000 and one above 2,000. Sunderland had only one player reaching either threshold.
That gives the minute-share table greater meaning. Leeds did not reach 56.1% merely through one or two unusually durable qualifying players. HGP status ran through a significant portion of the side’s established playing group.
Chelsea and Manchester City reveal the problem with the label
The most instructive comparison comes when the HGP table is placed alongside academy data.
An April 2026 BBC Sport analysis found Chelsea first for Premier League minutes given to academy graduates at that point, with 5,673. Manchester City were second on 5,162 and had used seven academy players.
Yet FIVDA’s separate completed-season analysis of formal senior-HGP utilization puts Chelsea at 30.8% and Manchester City at 12.6%. That distinction is particularly important at Chelsea, whose unusually young first-team and recruitment profile FIVDA has examined separately despite the club ranking well below Leeds and Everton for formal senior-HGP utilisation.
Brentford and Burnley provide the reverse example. Both had recorded zero academy-graduate minutes in the BBC analysis, yet senior HGPs ultimately supplied 39.5% of Brentford’s recorded league minutes and 39.3% of Burnley’s, based on FIVDA’s matching of the official Premier League lists with FBref minutes.
Figure 3 — Academy Usage Is Not HGP Usage
The two measures cover different definitions and, importantly, different time periods, so they should not be treated as competing versions of the same ranking. That is precisely why the comparison is useful.
Academy minutes ask how much a club is using players developed through its academy. HGP minutes ask how much playing time comes from senior footballers who satisfy the Premier League’s registration criteria.
Those questions can produce radically different answers. It is another example of why a Premier League ranking only becomes meaningful once we are precise about what the underlying metric actually measures.
Home-grown is not a nationality measure either
The same caution applies to nationality.
Because the Premier League defines HGP status through registration history irrespective of nationality, counting English or British players would not reproduce the official category. Nor can a player simply be assumed to qualify because he currently plays for the club that developed him.
That makes shortcuts particularly dangerous when discussing the rule. “Home-grown”, “academy graduate” and “English player” may overlap in individual cases, but they are not interchangeable categories.
FIVDA’s analysis deliberately uses players explicitly designated as HGPs on the official senior registration lists rather than attempting to infer their status from nationality, age or club history.
Complying with the rule is not the same as building around HGPs
The 2025/26 table ultimately reveals two different questions hidden inside the same regulation.
The first is administrative: can a club construct a legal senior squad within the Premier League’s registration requirements?
The second is footballing: how much does that club actually use its qualifying players?
The first question cannot be answered from playing time. The second can.
Leeds received 56.1% of their recorded league minutes from senior HGPs. Everton received 54.2% and Newcastle 49.3%. At the opposite end, Manchester City were at 12.6% and Sunderland 9.2%, according to FIVDA’s analysis of the official Premier League registrations and FBref minutes.
None of that establishes which club developed players best, recruited most intelligently or benefited competitively from its approach.
It does show why the phrase “home-grown” needs more care than football discussions often give it.
The Premier League’s HGP rule is not an academy table in disguise. It is a squad-registration category. And once the players who formally qualify are matched to the minutes they actually played, the clubs most associated with academy production are not necessarily the clubs most reliant on Home Grown Players.
In 2025/26, nobody relied on them more heavily than Leeds.
Main image is by Jonny Gios on Unsplash.
