Seven reasons Premier League’s transfer window was kind of meh،
Those who love transfers and the excitement of Deadline Day 'will they, won't they' do business were distinctly disappointed last week, especially if they were Premier League fans. Take a look at the biggest clubs in the game (as defined by revenue) and you'll notice that the top 10 added, at best, two projected instant-impact starters, and that's assuming Sacha Boey at Bayern Munich and Timo Werner at Tottenham Hotspur do not. They are not team players, which is entirely possible.
Indeed, according to Deloitte, the Premier League has seen its spending fall from £815 million ($1.028 billion) a year ago to £100 million this window. That's quite a vertical drop for the richest league in the world. In fact, this is the lowest spending – excluding COVID-impacted seasons – in more than a decade.
This happened for several reasons.
1. The January window is usually slow
Generally, clubs don't like to cut contributing players in January – and contributing players, unsurprisingly, tend to cost more because, well, they contribute. There's half a season left and if you move anyone you need to find a competent replacement or risk sliding down the table. But of course, a competent replacement is probably contributing elsewhere and that the club will be reluctant to move him.
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So, to meet your January goal, you often have to pay too much compared to what would be required in the summer, and this often only happens if your counterpart can find a replacement. The type of players you would want to move are more likely to be loaned out – where there will be a loan fee, at most, but no transfer fee – and even that can be tricky, because if they are at a At a bigger club, their salaries could make them prohibitive for smaller clubs.
2. January 2023 was a Chelsea-fueled outlier
The London club's massive January spree (£265m/$335m) skewed the numbers significantly, pushing things to £815m (over $1bn), but that was far off to be typical. Excluding the COVID years (where it was considerably lower) and according to TransferMarkt it was around £220m in 2020 and £205m in 2019. So yes, spending is down, but far from being as monstrously down as the headline figures suggest.
3. The domino effect exists
Let's go back to the first point and think about the fact that when a club spends on a player, the old club must find a replacement… and that replacement's old club must find a replacement. And so on. A major transfer can and does generate a chain reaction and money recirculates. But if there's nothing to trigger it, it won't happen.
For example, if, say, Arsenal had decided they needed a centre-forward and opted to spend £100 million, for example, on Alexander Isak from Newcastle United, Newcastle could have spent £60 million sterling for AFC Bournemouth's Dominic Solanke as a replacement. And Bournemouth might have felt they had to fill Solanke's big shoes by acquiring Jean-Philippe Mateta from Crystal Palace for £30million. And Palace could have then signed Elijah Adebayo from Luton Town for £20m. And Luton could then have taken Oli McBurnie from Sheffield United for £5m.
And then, suddenly, £215 million was spent in a big game of musical chairs, all driven by a single deal.
4. Profit and sustainability rules – and their enforcement – have had an impact
The regulations, introduced a few years ago based on UEFA's Financial Fair Play model (then amended last year), aim to reduce the amount of losses a club can suffer over a rolling three-year period. . It wasn't entirely clear how aggressively these measures would be enforced, but clubs got their answer this season when Everton lost 10 points for past violations. As if that wasn't enough, the Premier League has introduced 'real-time' monitoring and a fast-track process so that this year's violations will be punished by the end of the campaign.
As you may have seen, Nottingham Forest and Everton (again) were charged under these rules. Their impact may have been a little overstated, but they undoubtedly affected Everton and Forest's January transfers and probably others who might have been at risk like Chelsea and Newcastle.
For clubs in the PSR (Profit and Sustainability Rules) bubble, it's not worth taking the risk, especially when it doesn't look like you'll hit your revenue targets for the season. (For example, you imagine Chelsea thought they would be higher in the table and Newcastle expected to still be in Europe – and with revenue to match – rather than where they are now.)
5. Many big clubs – for different reasons – have chosen not to participate in this competition.
We've covered Chelsea and Newcastle, but clubs facing a transition are also unlikely to act. Next summer, Manchester United will have a new minority shareholder (Sir Jim Ratcliffe), a new chief executive (Omar Berrada), a new type of sporting director (Sir Dave Brailsford) and possibly a new manager. Liverpool will also have a new manager and a new director of football. Common sense – and common business practices – tell you that the time to spend money is not when new management has not yet taken over.
Arsenal (around £200 million for Kai Havertz, Declan Rice and Jurriën Timber) and Manchester City (a little more than that for Jérémy Doku, Josko Gvardiol, Matheus Nunes and Mateo Kovacic) have spent money this summer and, maybe because they do. well placed in the table (both just two points from the top), they probably saw no need to invest more in winter.
Simply put, these are the types of clubs that inject significant liquidity into the market – liquidity that then trickles down.
6. There was little urgency in the bottom half of the table
They call it “panic buying”, and it's what happens when teams are desperate to get out of the relegation zone – or, just as often, not to get dragged into it. This is when clubs are willing to pay for reinforcements mid-season, thinking it will cost them less than being relegated.
Except that, rightly or wrongly, we have the feeling that two of the three relegation places are already decided and that Sheffield United and Burnley are going down. Let's be honest: Luton Town have joined them, although after taking 11 points from their last six games, that could prove to be a spectacularly bad verdict. But with those three clubs joined by Everton and Nottingham Forest – two clubs in dire financial conditions as mentioned above – many of those between 10th and 15th felt relatively safe.
7. This is an incident because winter is weird and not an industry-wide trend
The January window doesn't follow traditional transfer market logic, it offers a small sample size which makes it more vulnerable to abnormal events, and it generally doesn't mean much when it comes to spotting players. trends.
Do you want evidence ? Consider that the league that spends the most is the French Ligue 1, which usually brings up the rear. (And no, it's not all Paris Saint-Germain either: in fact, they were surpassed by Lyon as four clubs exceeded the €20 million mark, compared to just one in the Premier League.) second biggest spending league wasn't even in Europe, nor was it the Saudi Pro League: it was the Brazilian Serie A, thanks to deals like the one that took Luiz Henrique from Real Betis to Botafogo, making him the second most expensive transfer in league history.
The Premier League is third, just ahead of Italy's Serie A and La Liga, with MLS coming in a more than respectable seventh.
What about the Saudi Pro League, you ask? The summer spenders who were going to buy up all the sport, redefine football and build a juggernaut on the Gulf? Well, for some reason they mostly stayed put, ranking in 15th place, behind the Russian First League (despite the sanctions), the Ukrainian First League (despite the war) and the Belgian elite ( despite, well, the fact that there is no oil in Belgium).
The main thing here? Don't worry about the lack of transfer activity during the January 2024 Premier League window. There are reasons for this, but it's nothing to worry about. And expect them to bounce back, cash in hand, come January.
