Swale, it gets more complicated. I just had a look at the rules and they don't seem to make it clear whether the likes of Sibs, Bird, Knight etc are of professional standing through their incomplete explanation. Further down the page, they complicate things even further by introducing a new category of player, namely, the Established Player. That would seem to discount those players in the list.
Looking at the POPS rule, we are, according to EFL rules, in possession of of enough POPS to stop us signing any more players.
Looking at the EP rule, we should be able, within EFFL rules, to sign 7 more players provided they are either free agents or loans.
Here's the EFL page "explaining" things.... badly.
https://www.efl.com/-more/governance...mbargoes-faqs/