The January Transfer Window, Don’t Get Your Hopes Up
The January Transfer Window. The lone oasis in the gruelling trek across the desert that is the Premier League season. A last chance to restock and re-energise before putting the head down and marching towards the finish line, for better or for worse, with a fixed and finalised squad of players. This window offers the final opportunity to add that crucial extra playmaker, or to fill that glaring weakness. Or so the narrative goes, anyway.
In reality the January window is more like a trip to the shops on Christmas Eve. It’s too late to worry about bargains or quality gifts, it’s just a matter of getting something before it’s too late. Finding a parking space, fighting the crowds, battling for the last toy on the shelf, paying far too much for far too little…
It’s rare that a team finds a player in January who actually impacts their team in a positive way and immediately upon their arrival. Instead we see panic buy after overpriced player after genuine madness. Sometimes there’s a great deal out there waiting to happen. It just doesn’t happen the way that fans hope for when the madness of the winter window opens.
Patrice Evra is a perfect example. He arrived in January 2006 at Manchester United for £7m. Given a fairly quick introduction into English football, he struggled so badly that he was subbed off at half time in his debut - a 3-1 loss in the Manchester Derby. It wouldn’t be until December that he’d emerge as a first choice left-back (a position he’d hold firmly until ‘Moyes’).
One of the great January signings (value, talent and success all in one), but a player whose worth wasn’t known until long after his transfer. Short-term relief he was not. Most great January transfers turn out like this. Fans hoping for immediate impact and rapid relief are better off visiting their local chemist.
The winter window’s been around for a dozen or so years now. It was first installed to create a more level playing field among Premier League teams, keeping late signings from influencing the table or rich clubs from exploiting the poor folk. Instead we’ve seen insanity unfold in a massively tightened and inflated market. Not saying that isn’t enormous fun, but maybe be careful pinning your hopes on that kid your club picked up for £11m in January. I’m talkin’ ‘bout Wilfried Zaha.
Here’s what happened last year:
The 2013/14 January Transfer Window
For the most part, the January window is wonderful for young players. It’s a chance to get out on loan and get some football. We’ll ignore those developmental loans though, they aren’t very relevant for this argument.
Manchester City won the League last season. Chelsea second and Liverpool third. Arsenal filling the last Champions League spot. Three of those teams did absolutely nothing of note, seemingly happy with their squads, while Jose Mourinho made some tweaks to his Chelsea squad. He’s done plenty of that since arriving back, probably only now fully satisfied with the make-up of his squad. In this window he and Abramovic splashed £22m on Nemanja Matic, £14m on Mohamed Salah and £12m on Kurt Zouma. Zouma is a young defender bought for the future, Salah a winger who hasn’t done much and Matic… well, Matic may be one of the best January signings ever. He turned up from Benfica and has been superb ever since. He’s the rock at the back of Chelsea’s midfield and one of their most important players.
While writing cheques has never been a problem for Mr Abramovic, his spending a year ago was pretty much financed by getting inflated prices for a couple of off-casts – Juan Mata to a desperate Man Utd for £39m and Kevin De Bruyne to Wolfsburg for £19m.
United also used the window to offload some deadwood as David Moyes struggled and failed to save his job.
At the bottom of the table, Hull City and Crystal Palace went a little crazy with spending and all managed to survive relegation. You can probably put most of that down to the arrival of Tony Pulis as manager for Palace and the goodwill and team spirit of a deep FA Cup run for Hull. Sunderland made a couple paid transfers but it was the recalled (from loan) Connor Wickham’s goals that saved them from relegation.
What fans seem to expect of the January window is for their clubs to fill all those weaknesses exposed since the season began. We’ve been conceding goals! We need a defender! We aren’t scoring enough! Buy a striker! We can’t keep possession! MIDFIELD MIDFIELD MIDFIELD!!!
Or for Arsenal fans it’s a chance to dig out the flags and banners from last year and demand all three. Plus maybe a keeper. Or a new manager (which is bollocks).
It’s never that easy. Not only do you not get any value in January but clubs are reluctant to sell their best players. If you want a Wilfried Bony it’ll cost you £30m. Look at West Ham, where Sam Allardyce has chosen that rather than selling soon-to-be off contract Winston Reid now, he’d rather have him around for another six months and get that money back on the pitch. The value isn’t there, and neither are the players. Desperate teams end up paying far too much while level headed teams that keep their ears to the ground might be able to pick up some quality depth if they’re lucky. Players that won’t have to be thrust into the spotlight from the start and will actually be given time to adapt and improve.
If your club has no issue with spending the dineros (Chelsea or City) then you might be able to force through a good transfer. Otherwise you’re hoping for an undercover coup or a straight-up fluke. It can happen, though.
10 Great January Signings
Matic has already been mentioned here. The second-most expensive man on the list, but where some were ready to label him a bust from the start, he’s actually been one of the very rare expensive UK winter signings that has lived up to the bill. Manchester City have had a few of those that could have been on this list but for their hefty price tags, Edin Dzecko for example. However it should be mentioned that Chelsea actually bought him back in 2009 for £1.5, but sold him in the deal that brought David Luiz to Stamford Bridge. He only played twice in the premier League in his first spell, so let’s assume that the three years away improved him enormously as a player. The extra money they paid for him the second tie round is easily subsumed into the profit they made from the sale of David Luiz anyway.
Moussa Sissoko was one of Newcastle’s Mike Ashley Scheme players. A young player (usually French) bought on the cheap with the intention of selling him for bags with dollar signs on them in a few years. Well, guys like Yohan Cabaye, Mathieu Debuchy and Demba Ba have all been cashed in on, and Sissoko could be the next. But in the meantime he remains probably the Toon’s best player. And he cost 1/15th of the money they got for Andy Carroll a few years back.
Dan Sturridge never made it at Chelsea. He struggled for playing time and Liverpool took a gamble on him and it paid off big time. He had one season of complete brilliance in tandem with Luis Suarez and has succeeded the Uruguayan as the go to guy for the Reds. Injuries have slowed him to a halt this season, though he’ll still be a guaranteed England starter once he returns. Suarez, meanwhile, he came in the same window as Andy Carroll and despite his patented moments of madness, he was consistently one of the very best players in England, arguably even on the planet.
Ivanovic and Cahill were undercover signings by Chelsea’s money-splashing reputation. They’re also perfect examples that price tags on footballers are just a lazy way to pile on pressure. The cost of the player is relevant to their ability to leverage, not their talent. Both arrived in-between the Mourinho spells and have stayed on as regulars since The Special One returned. Cahill may have slipped in form recently, nonetheless he’s far and away the top centre back for England while the Serbian Ivanovic is still an absolute gun at fullback.
Manchester United went through a spell where replacing Peter Schmeichel seemed impossible. Among the candidates was American Tim Howard, but he never stuck. Since he was offloaded to Everton, though, he’s been one of the best keeper in the Premier League. And when you have a great keeper it’s amazing how much better the defence in front of him looks… and the midfield in front of them. And the forwards in front of them.
And the final three are a trio of reliable defensive leaders. For a while Vidic, with Rio Ferdinand, formed one of the great EPL defensive partnerships, and both he and Evra captained Manchester United. As for Ryan Nelsen? That’s a sentimental one.
And now the case that destroyed it all:
It was the 2010/11 season when it happened. Four years ago now to the month. Struggling to capitalise on a wonderful defence by scoring enough goals, Chelsea decided to make a move. They submitted a £40m bid for Liverpool’s Spanish star Fernando Torres, who had scored the winner for his nation at EURO 2008 final as well as winning the 2010 World Cup and had been a constant presence on the golden boot list since arriving at Liverpool. That bid was rejected. Torres decides he wants the move and hands in a transfer request. That request was rejected. However a few days later the clubs agree a fee of over £50m – the sixth biggest fee in history at the time. His debut came in a 1-0 loss to his old club and it didn’t get any better from there. It took him 903 minutes to score his first goal for the club and his move is now considered one of the worst deals ever made. Just 20 goals in 110 EPL games, 45 in 172 games in all competitions. He was finally offloaded this very window to AC Milan for a little over £2m and the Italians immediately flipped him to Atletico on loan.
So, to sum it all up in a tweet’s length, with less than a week to go until the mid-season window closes for 2015, don’t get your hopes up.