The January transfer window is a pretty miserable time for most football clubs. For the lower-end teams, it's a time of scrambling around for anything that looks vaguely helpful in the relegation scrap, even when that thing is Chris Samba with a £12.5m price tag. For middling teams it's also a time of worry, as star players start to take a shine to their apparent suitors. Even for big clubs, the extortionate fees that their competitors will charge for letting important players go midseason means January business is generally a no-go. For every Luis Suárez there's a couple of Fernando Torreses; for every Nemanja Matić there's a handful of Eric Djemba-Djembas.
The January transfer window is perfect as it is
Many Premier League managers hate the January window, but as a spectator sport, there’s not much better.
Clint Hughes/Getty Images
Plenty of managers have appealed for the current two-window system to be reformed. Footballing visionary Tony Pulis has called for a reversion to the old system, whereby the window was open from the start of summer until March of the following year. Instead of a couple of smaller transfer periods, he basically wanted one massive one. Fortunately for his clubs (remember, this is a man who broke the bank to sign Kenwyne Jones), no notice was taken. The latest to appeal for a change comes from Tottenham Hotspur boss Mauricio Pochettino, who also wants only one transfer window a season.
Of course, they’re both right: the January transfer window is a pretty silly thing that rarely works well for anyone. But we must hope the authorities continue to turn a blind eye. Because away from the irritating around-the-grounds Sky Sports-manufactured drama that surrounds Jim White Month, there’s a great reason to love the January transfer window: it’s absurdly hilarious. No matter quite how much clubs attempt to professionalize their transfer process with databases and heatmaps and transfer caves, the irrationality of desperation always has the potential to rule.
Unfortunately, this seems to be a trend that affects the poor souls near the bottom of the table more than anyone else. Sure, Manchester United spending nigh-on £40m to sign Juan Mata this time last year was pretty funny -- especially for José Mourinho -- and it too smacked of desperation, a failing manager's last desperate roll of the dice. But Juan Mata is still Juan Mata. United may have overpaid, but they still got themselves a very good footballer. No, the really amusing January happenings tend to come when teams have very little to spend, and last year was a prime example.
Perhaps the most tragic tale came from Cardiff City, where Ole Gunnar Solskjær attempted to import the whole of Norway in a bid to turn his side's fortunes. Making matters worse, January also saw the Bluebirds flog Rudy Gestede, who is currently enjoying a prolific season in the Championship and could well be on his way back to the Premier League with Crystal Palace, to Blackburn Rovers.
Steve Bardens/Getty Images
Cardiff's blushes were only spared by the bizarre transfer dealings of their Welsh rivals Swansea City. Garry Monk's January criteria seemed to be "a striker who doesn't score," with David N'Gog and Marvin Emnes joining from Bolton and Middlesbrough, respectively. Their clinical performances in a (combined) 10 appearances produced one goal -- somehow enough for Emnes to bag a permanent move.
Just as entertaining was West Ham United's business. This may have been before West Ham were the hipsters' choice (instead they were struggling near the bottom of table), but that didn't stop Sam Allardyce looking to fortify his squad with Antonio Nocerino and Marco Borriello: two aging, bearded bit-part players who wouldn't look at all out of place in Shoreditch's new Cereal Killer Cafe (I really wish this thing didn't actually exist). Alas, Allardyce seemed to miss the hipster memo, and signed the pair after they were cool instead of before. They were both utterly useless in the Premier League, barely played, and were promptly sent packing at the end of the season.
Their fellow Londoners Fulham were also pretty funny, spending a fortune to sign Kostas Mitroglou, and less than a fortune on half of Manchester United's youth team. However, nothing at all was as funny as Felix Magath trying to treat an injury with a block of cheese, so we'll just leave that there, and come to the crème de la crème of January transfer business.
Now, here I'm going to have to break my earlier rule that only small teams are stupid and/or desperate enough to engage in strange January transfer business, but Arsenal don't do things quite like anyone else. Trying to understand their inner workings is like trying to understand a priceless Swiss timepiece (albeit one that always seems to run a few seconds late). They are gloriously, delightfully, hopelessly Arsenal; a team for whom getting things right always seems to come as a pleasant surprise. And in this month back in 2014, they made the most glorious of all January head-scratchers. They signed Kim Källström.
Must Reads
Källström was a player who’d been around long enough to hazily recall the name, but scarce else. All everyone knew was that he definitely wasn’t good enough for a team that still seemed to have a very good chance of challenging for the title.
The move admittedly made some sort of sense: it was clearly Arsène Wenger’s attempt at adding depth made necessary by the injury crisis that eventually derailed his side’s Premier League campaign. It wasn’t that Källström was a terrible player, or that Arsenal overpaid, as he arrived on loan. But the signing was so unambitious, and so utterly bizarre that Wenger needn’t have bothered in the first place. Instead, it just served as yet another amusing indicator of Arsenal mismanagement: here was a team dogged by injury problems year after year, and as if that wasn’t damning enough in itself, their backup plan (though perhaps assuming Arsenal planned this move is to be kind) was an old guy already carrying an injury.
Alas, this January has so far been comparatively quiet. The closest thing we've had to a silly buy has been Sunderland forking out eye-watering wages for Jermain Defoe. Could it be that teams have finally cottoned on to the futility of the winter window after last year's peak month for pointless purchases? Let's hope not. Where there's desperation, there should always be funny transfers. It may just be that with the Premier League looking pretty set at the top, and contrastingly wide open at the bottom (two of the teams in the bottom three, Leicester City and Hull City, have both picked up a couple of wins in their last five games), no one is yet quite desperate enough. Not even Harry "wheeler dealer" Redknapp's Queens Park Rangers. But, then again, there's still almost a week to go ...
See More:
