If you were glued to Sky Sports News for the usual excitement of the end of the January Transfer Window you will no doubt have been hugely disappointed by the lack of action.
Two question can be asked from this though.
Is it actually a bad thing that lots of transfers didn’t take place, and was it just a case of clubs getting their transfers in order earlier in the month?
For a start we still saw roughly £130 million spent by the clubs, and only 2 of the Premiership’s 20 clubs didn’t bring in a player in the January transfer window, although only 6 clubs actually brought in more than one player. In total 35 players were bought compared top 46 for the same period last year, although the spend was actually roughly the same.
Only 3 clubs really spent heavily, and as you might expect they are 3 of the ‘big boys’, but looking more closely even these aren’t outrageous, as Arsenal (who brought in Krystian Bielik & Gabriel Paulista) are notoriously frugal in their expenditure (to the point of even annoying their own fans in the past), Chelsea did spend £24 million to bring in the impressive Columbian winger Juan Cuadrado for Fiorentina on the final day, but actually made money by selling Andre Schurrle to Wolfsberg for £22 million, and Ryan Bertrand to Southampton for £10 million. The final team to spend any money of note were Manchester City who shelled out £28 million to bring in striker Wilfried Bony from Swansea, but even City themselves have been working hard to reduce their wage bill over the past few seasons.
Of the other transfers more than half were either free transfers or loan deals, as clubs continue to try to balance the books.
Whilst this might not be as exciting or ambitious as the fans had hoped in reality do we really want our club to go out and do what almost seems like panic buy? Almost every team in the league still has something to play for. Whether it is a team aiming for the title, or a Champions League place, a team under performing, or a team struggling to avoid the dreaded drop, so it is vitally important a club enters February with confidence that it has the best squad possible to achieve it’s objectives. This has obviously got to met with caution though.
QPR, Leicester, Ipswich, Derby, Wimbledon, Bradford, Leeds, Southampton, Crystal Palace, and Portsmouth in England and Motherwell, Dundee, Livingston, Gretna, Rangers, Dunfermline, and Heart Of Midlothian in Scotland are all teams that have played Premiership football in the last 15 years, and have still found themselves in administration soon after.
Uefa have introduced the Financial Fir Play (FFP) ruling that clubs cannot now spend beyond their means. This has almost resulted in a one in – one out philosophy.
With less than 4 months now left of the season here are the final additions that clubs have made in January.
Arsenal: Krystian Bielik, Gabriel Paulista
Aston Villa: Carles Gil, Scott Sinclair
Burnley: Michael Keane
Chelsea: Juan Cuadrado
Crystal Palace: Shola Ameobi, Yaya Sanogo, Pape Souare, Jordan Much, Lee Chung-Yong, Wilfried Zaha, Keshi Anderson, Andreas Breimyr
Everton: Aaron Lennon
Hull: Dame N’Doye
Leicester City: Robert Huth, Andrek Kramaric, Mark Schwarzer
Liverpool: None
Manchester City: Wilfried Bony
Manchester United: Sadiq El Fitouri, Victor Valdes, Andy Kellett
Newcastle United: None
QPR: Maurto Zarate
Southampton: Filip Djuricic, Ryan Bertrand
Stoke City: Philipp Wollscheid
Sunderland: Jermain Defoe
Swansea: Jack Cork, Matt Grimes, Kyle Naughton
Tottenham Hotspur: Dele Alli
West Brom: Callum McManaman, Darren Fletcher
West Ham United: Doneil Henry