will have had

English as a Second Language English Vocabulary, Grammar and Idioms
1

Hi,
“Like most other Premier League teams, Sunderland will have had a lot of players away on international duty so Sam will not have been able to do too much work with them in his first week in charge.”

–I wonder what the Tense used added to the sentence, why not going for simple ‘had a lot of players away’ and ‘wasn’t able to do’? (The author is “fairly certain that something is true”, what else?)

2

I think the use of this tense is to stress the sense of the inevitable.

3

“Like most other Premier League teams, Sunderland will have had a lot of players away on international duty so Sam will not have been able to do too much work with them in his first week in charge.”

Can this sentence be written in the form below?

“Like most other Premier League teams, Sunderland will have had a lot of players away on international duty so Sam will not be able to do too much work with them in his first week in charge.”

Thanks

4

I think it can’t be put that way.

Relying on a discussion we had here previously, “The word ‘will’ can be used to indicate that something is likely or sometimes even that something is inevitable”:
A: “I wanted to watch The Simpsons last night, but I missed it.”
B: “I’m certain Derek will have recorded it. We can go over to his place to see it.”

The tense chosen in the original, clearly sends us to the past (those players were predictably\as expected called upon and Sam, their manager, quite inevitably, hadn’t the possibility to work with them in the club).