Too much of a 'good thing'??

I mentioned last week that there was probably an 'expanded' version of the FPL rules hidden away somewhere, because.... there are certain lacunae, certain points not covered in the rather brief rules published on the main FPL webpages. 

One such area of mystery is the issue of what happens if you inadvertently exceed the normal club quota of three players from any one Premier League side - through having someone transfer in to a club you already hold three players from.

That's happening to quite a lot of people at the moment, with the very popular Antoine Semenyo and Marc Guehi both accepting January moves to Manchester City - from whom, in addition to the inescapable Erling Haaland, Nunes, O'Reilly, Doku, Cherki, Foden, Reijnders, and Donnarumma are all fairly common selections.

I don't think this has ever happened to me, but it's not such an uncommon phenomenon. What appears to happen is that you're allowed your suddenly over-quota line-up of 4 (or even 5 or 6 or whatever...) players until you next make a transfer; but as soon as you want to make any changes to your squad, you have to begin by reducing your holding from that club back to the regular maximum of 3 players.

Straightforward enough, really; except that I have no idea if this rule is actually stated in print anywhere. It seems to be something you just have to learn through experience.

And because of that lack of clarity on the issue in the 'basic rules', all sorts of bizarre notions start to circulate online about this situation. I saw a chap on a forum the other day insisting that you're allowed to have more than 3 players in your squad in these circumstances, but not allowed to put more than 3 in your starting eleven.... NOT SO!

Of course, the real mystery here is WHY anyone would already have 3 City players. Donnarumma is nowhere near the best keeper pick for FPL (and is prohibitively expensive), Foden has become unproductive again after his insane two-week points splurge at the start of December, and the other midfielders - including Semenyo, for now, at least - and probably O'Reilly too, are all minutes risks.

Guehi is likely to be an immediate and regular starter, at least while Dias and Gvardiol are injured; but I would rather have waited a week or two to see if that really would be the case, and to see how well he'd settle in at the new club, before making a decision about retaining or acquiring him.

If I'd suddenly found myself with 5 Manchester City players, I'd probably take this odd stroke of Fate as a prompting to get rid of 3 or 4 of them as soon as possible. But, of course, it is unfortunate to have to make even 2 'forced' transfers as a result of this obscure little rules glitch.