Spontaneous Ruminations on Transfer Deadline Day
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Falcao, aye? Who saw that one coming? It was meant to be Real Madrid all along that were hunting for him. Maybe Juventus. Maybe even Man City, Chelsea or Arsenal. Nobody thought he’d be a Manchester United player by the end of the day but then there’s always one massive one like this every year.
So what do we know about him? He’s a 28 year old Colombian. Coming back from a serious leg injury that ruined the back half of his season with Monaco and ruled him out of the World Cup (allowing a certain James Rodriguez to take over as the star man). He’s starred for Atletico Madrid and Monaco, and famously destroyed Chelsea in the 2012 European Super Cup with a hat-trick. He’s a proven goal scorer wherever he’s played and he joins on a season long loan with an option to buy at the conclusion.
It was a busy day for Man Utd. Daley Blind finally completed his expected move and then the Falcao deal freed up both Javier Hernandez and Danny Welbeck to move along - Hernandez on a season long loan (also with an option to buy) to European champs Real Madrid while Welbeck sealed a late move to Arsenal amidst strong interest from Spurs. Arsenal clearly needed another striking option with Giroud injured and a proven international for £16m or so is quite a handy bit of transfer work. Welbeck has pace and skill to go with a great work rate. His finishing is doubtful but he never really got the chance to play consistently in one position with Man U. He could well prove a great bit of business. It hadn’t looked promising for the Gunners with Arsene Wenger reportedly refereeing a charity game at the Vatican (you can’t make this stuff up!) on deadline day. But that’s why we have cellphones. That and for easily leaked photos, apparently.
Manchester United also sent young English midfielder Nick Powell out on loan to Leicester while winger Tom Lawrence joins the Foxes on a four year contract. And defender Michael Keane (who played against Sunderland) joins Burnley for the season. However the Red Devils failed to find any suitors for Anderson or the injured Marouane Fellaini (who was set for a Napoli loan until he got hurt) and Tom Cleverley will remain after scuppering an Aston Villa move (wage demands). He’ll probably see out this last year of his contract and leave afterwards.
There wasn’t a whole lot of hard cash being thrown around this deadline day. Mostly those cheeky loan moves. Chelsea sent Nathaniel Chalobah to Burnley and Marco Van Ginkel to AC Milan and Man City let Micah Richards out to Fiorentina in Italy, Jamal Blackman to Middlesbrough and Emyr Huws to Wigan. James Milner stays though. Not so for Alvaro Negredo, he’s a Valencia player for the next 12 months with an expected permanent move after that. Poor City, they’re down to just three world class strikers! Arsenal loaned out a Ryo Miyaichi, and Spurs sent Lewis Holtby to Hamburg with an option to buy. Never sure why he didn’t get more of a chance to impress for them. Liverpool too joined this game, with Stoke borrowing Oussama Assaidi and Sunderland Sebastian Coates (they also loaned Ricardo Alvarez from Inter Milan). Gotta get the youngsters some experience, I guess. Chelsea have now got more players out on loan than they do first team squad members!
Steve Bruce will be sleeping with a smile right now, Hull City had a massive day. They broke their club record transfer to bring in Uruguayan striker Abel Hernandez from Palermo for £10m. You saw him at the World Cup a couple times if you were watching closely. Their spending all started from the boost they got with the sale of Shane Long to Southampton for 200% of what they paid for them six months earlier. The Tigers kept that clever business nous on display, also added Mohamed Diame from West Ham and Gaston Ramirez on loan from Southampton to go with Michael Dawson who they picked up last week. To top things off, they managed to just sneak inside the deadline with a loan move for Newcastle’s Hatem Ben Arfa. That’s all areas of the pitch improved this window. Can’t ask for much more than that. (They did sell George Boyd to Burnley for £3m too)
Obviously ‘Arry Redknapp had his say too. Typically, he was linked to all sorts of Spurs players and he even managed to pull the trigger on a couple. Sandro joins QPR for £6m and Redknapp favourite Niko Kranjcar comes in on loan. Plus the usual gluttony of interviews for anyone with a microphone and a camera (well, almost anyone - more on that later). He reckons Jermaine Defoe could join in January.
Spurs themselves didn’t do too much, letting Zeki Fryers transfer to Palace (who also added Kevin Doyle on loan and James McArthur for a club record £7m – an impressive day for them too), though they did bring in Benjamin Stambouli which is weird since he’s a midfielder and if there’s one position they’re set in that’s it. Stambouli cost ‘em around £4.7m and apparently he’s a Schneiderlin clone (there’s your inspiration right there). I guess they did pick up a defender last week though in Federico Fazio. A striker might have been nice, maybe they can reinvigorate Roberto Soldado, who surprisingly remained put (no cover to sell him, really).
Southampton were all over the back pages too. First of all and possibly most importantly, they kept hold of guys like Morgan Schneiderlin and Jay Rodriguez. Second, they bizarrely cancelled the Saphir Taider loan from Inter Milan after three weeks, probably because they picked up better options. In comes Toby Alderweireld on loan from Atletico (he was a long term target) and Sadio Mane for £10m. The former a Belgian defender, the latter a Senegalese forward/winger. It’s been a very busy window for the Saints.
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Other little bits and pieces? West Ham got their mits on Morgan Amalfitano, a cheap French midfielder (and kept their mits on Winston Reid!). Swansea got young Swedish-Gambian goal scorer Modou Barrow. Newcastle also sent Mapou Yanga-Mbiwa on loan to Roma (while also not signing a single Frenchman!). Everton sold Shane Duffy to Blackburn. Aston Villa let Karim El Ahmadi move to Feyenoord for an undisclosed fee . North of the border Celtic tried all day to get John Guidetti on loan from City but messed up the times and the deadline passed. They’re appealing, though they did get Serbian striker Stefan Scepovic.
I absolutely love the madness of transfer deadline day. The shotgun transfers, the panic buys, how completely illogical it all is... but I really don't like the constant updates from journalists with umbrellas standing outside some club's training ground feeding us an 'exclusive' we read on twitter 5 minutes earlier. So I'm glad the good citizens of the footballing world grouped together to make it as hard as possible for them... and get on TV in the process:
Plus, here's the mythical footage of Harry Redknapp *refusing* a car-window TV interview. Better check out your own window for flying pigs.
And the strangest signing of the day? Gotta be Zenit St Petersburg (under the tutelage of a certain Andre Villas-Boas) getting a 7 foot tall Bart Simpson on board. Those eyes... dear God...