Florent Malouda not included in Champions League squad

Chelsea have announced their squad for the Champions League group stages, and it's missing a very familiar face. Last season, neither Romelu Lukaku nor Ryan Bertrand were included in the list, both victims of the bizarre club-trained/association trained UEFA policy that appears to be designed to favour associations which use B-teams over those whose primary mechanism of player development is via loans. This time, Bertrand makes it -- it's Florent Malouda who misses out.

That doesn't come as much surprise, considering Malouda has been completely uninvolved all year and was left off Chelsea's Super Cup squad for 'technical reasons'. He'll probably end up on the Premier League squad, just because we have more open slots, but there's every chance he just gets loaned out to some team in France as well.

Anyway, here's the full Champions League squad list:

Blue is for the B-List, which is for under-21s who've been with the squad for two years (i.e. not Lucas Piazon, who makes the main list), green is for club-trained players, of which we have one, and red is for association-trained players. We're limited to 22 senior spots because we've only got John Terry counting as club trained, which is laughable in light of Ryan Bertrand existing, but it's not a huge deal that we don't have a full squad. It's for six games, and we can mix things up later on. Remember that last year Bertrand didn't make the initial squad either, and he ended up starting in the final.

The Premier League squad should be far more straightforward. Chelsea have the requisite eight home-grown players, so there should be room for the likes of Malouda and Henrique Hilario. Assuming they're still around, of course.