January Transfer Window - The Verdict.

[Dave]

Not pissed off, and yes essentially I'm rehashing the same conversation, just with some hindsight. Only reason I poked a little there was not getting any substance from the arguments other than 'risk', but I hear what you're saying.

There's more to it than just risk and padding the squad in case of injuries.

For example, if we assume that we're planning to buy a fantastic second striker / winger in the summer to replace Bailey in the first eleven, I think we'd be doing better right now had we just signed them in January.

That can obviously be countered with "their club might not have wanted to sell them in January". Which is obviously true, but as a rule of thumb, the sort of shit-hot player that we could only possibly sign in the summer isn't the sort of player whose club will want to sell at all.

They might be just as unavailable in the summer as they turned out to be in January. They might have a storming second half of the season and we find £40m added to their price. Or find that they're now being sold to Man City instead. Or that their team has qualified for the Champions League that they were sticking around to help with, and the player now wants to stay and play in the Champions League rather than joining us.

If we are in a strong financial position (which I believe we are), with engaged owners (which I believe we have) and a squad that barely has enough players to name a match-day squad (which it does) and there is a small pool of very specific playerss we have decided that we really need to the extent that we don't want to consider any alternatives to those players - just buy the buggers.

Equally though you can counter this argument by looking at players contracts.  Say, for instance, the shit-hot winger we want to sign has 18 months left on his contract.  As it is mid-season, his team rightly or wrongly will say we want full whack for him, that will be £60 million to you.  We spend the £60 million on player that 6 months later is available for less than half that, because now the selling club has a deadline to get rid of him - that is then £30 million we haven't got to spend on the shit-hot CB we also want.

Of course. None of this is an exact science - but the scenario you outline then throws up further realistic issues in the summer.

What if they then decide they want to do a Kamara, sit out the next twelve months of their contract and leave for nothing? Do we wait for another 12 months? There are other parties with input to this situation beyond us just deciding we want to save a bit of money.

What if they do a Caicedo at Brighton, sign a new contract with a big pay-rise in February and a new release clause of £80m? All of a sudden our decision to save £30m has now cost us an extra £20m.

The problem as I see it is that for "leave it to the summer" to be a fool-proof strategy, we are looking for a player with all of the following attributes:

(1) Such a good player that it is him, and only him that we could consider signing
(2) However, not such a good player that the likes of Napoli, Liverpool, Dortmund, Arsenal and other more attractive options would want to sign him ahead of us
(3) So desperate to join us that we're not worried about him wanting to stay with his current club or move somewhere else instead of us in the summer
(4) ...but not desperate enough to kick up a fuss about joining us in January. 

There are a million hypotheticals about what might happen in the summer as a result of what we did or didn't do in January - the only certainty is that right now there are players who we would like to be playing for us, who we hope will be playing for us in the future, who currently aren't.

[paul_e]

I think it's impossible to really answer this because there are too many hypotheticals.

Chris, for example, mentions that IF we didn't complete some deals over a few millions quid then it's short-sighted, and he's probably right BUT we have no idea if that happened with any of our targets.

As an alternative if Emery wants Guendouzi and Williams and had agreements with the players, agents and clubs to complete those deals in the summer then our options change because what we were then looking for towards the end of the window was loans of players who would improve us in the short-term but with no obligation on future purchases, etc. Those sort of players will have been a lot more difficult to find.

I'd hope that no one wanted us to either bring in pointless loans (Drinkwater, Bednarek, Augustinsson) who don't really add anything other than being a body on the bench, or make signings who weren't as good as the players we actually want and are waiting for.

I get it's risky and I get it's frustrating but I'd love us to get away from signing players just because we can.

As an example at the end of the summer we signed dendoncker and lots of people thought it was a panic buy. If we'd signed no one I suspect many of those same people would've also moaned that we hadn't strengthened the squad. Earlier in the window there are other choices but on the final day(s) these are the options, anything else has been exhausted.

So, sign no one or make a panic buy, which would you choose? No other options.

[Toronto Villa]

We also have some top kids returning from loan. Buying players who aren’t exactly what we want not only tied up cash we would have used in the summer but likely blocks the progress of the likes of Archer, Tim, Ramsey etc. It was a risk and I’m glad it hasn’t affected us too badly thus far. But if we do get through the season without any more significant injuries we will be very well positioned to build properly. Fingers and everything else crossed.

[chrisw1]

If we had been in any danger of going down, or were right in the mix for a European place then we should have strengthened in January - that wasn't the case though, so it's not like under Bruce where we were gambling the house.  Nothing in life is ever certain, but if finishing 11th rather than 8th this season means next year we will have a better chance of Europe or a cup win because we are able to get in the players we actually want then it is a price worth paying.

We're 4 points off 6.  Now chuck Thuram / Tammy & Guendouzi (insert fantasy player here) into the squad.

So why is it then that almost every other club does the vast majority of their important business in the summer? It isn't as easy as throwing money at it and 'getting them in', quite clearly.

Nobody said it's easy.  But that's not really relevant to that particular post.

[Pat Mustard]

If we had been in any danger of going down, or were right in the mix for a European place then we should have strengthened in January - that wasn't the case though, so it's not like under Bruce where we were gambling the house.  Nothing in life is ever certain, but if finishing 11th rather than 8th this season means next year we will have a better chance of Europe or a cup win because we are able to get in the players we actually want then it is a price worth paying.

We're 4 points off 6.  Now chuck Thuram / Tammy & Guendouzi (insert fantasy player here) into the squad.

Having played more games than everyone between 5th and 7th.  Since the window closed we have only lost to Arsenal, Man City and Leicester.  I'll give Leicester as a game where we should have done better, (and even then this was only a few days after the window so whoever we signed might not have played), but realistically how many more points would we have won even if we'd signed another 2 players?

[Dave]

So, sign no one or make a panic buy, which would you choose? No other options.

But outside of a message-board thought experiment, those aren't the only two options.

Here's one:

As an alternative if Emery wants Guendouzi and Williams and had agreements with the players, agents and clubs to complete those deals in the summer

Scribble out "the summer" on those agreements and stick "January 2023" there instead.

[chrisw1]

If we had been in any danger of going down, or were right in the mix for a European place then we should have strengthened in January - that wasn't the case though, so it's not like under Bruce where we were gambling the house.  Nothing in life is ever certain, but if finishing 11th rather than 8th this season means next year we will have a better chance of Europe or a cup win because we are able to get in the players we actually want then it is a price worth paying.

We're 4 points off 6.  Now chuck Thuram / Tammy & Guendouzi (insert fantasy player here) into the squad.

Having played more games than everyone between 5th and 7th.  Since the window closed we have only lost to Arsenal, Man City and Leicester.  I'll give Leicester as a game where we should have done better, (and even then this was only a few days after the window so whoever we signed might not have played), but realistically how many more points would we have won even if we'd signed another 2 players?

Again it's not the point.  We've been (reasonably) lucky with injuries and are 'in the mix' for top 8.  We may or may not have gained more points with an elite player or two added to the squad.  But I don't think it's a huge stretch to say that come the end of the season there may have been a points swing.  But again, that's not the whole point.  If Ollie had picked up a serious injury we're playing a kid who at the moment Emery clearly thinks isn't ready for more than 5 minute cameos.  With Kamar injured we're relying on SJM in the pivot, which he's made a good fist of but we all know he's not suited to.

But then we've been over this.  So in a shorter answer to Corey's question- 'No.'

[chrisw1]

So, sign no one or make a panic buy, which would you choose? No other options.

But outside of a message-board thought experiment, those aren't the only two options.

Here's one:

As an alternative if Emery wants Guendouzi and Williams and had agreements with the players, agents and clubs to complete those deals in the summer

Scribble out "the summer" on those agreements and stick "January 2023" there instead.

with maybe an extra million to the player and £3m to the club to oil the wheels.

[pauliewalnuts]

If we had been in any danger of going down, or were right in the mix for a European place then we should have strengthened in January - that wasn't the case though, so it's not like under Bruce where we were gambling the house.  Nothing in life is ever certain, but if finishing 11th rather than 8th this season means next year we will have a better chance of Europe or a cup win because we are able to get in the players we actually want then it is a price worth paying.

We're 4 points off 6.  Now chuck Thuram / Tammy & Guendouzi (insert fantasy player here) into the squad.

Having played more games than everyone between 5th and 7th.  Since the window closed we have only lost to Arsenal, Man City and Leicester.  I'll give Leicester as a game where we should have done better, (and even then this was only a few days after the window so whoever we signed might not have played), but realistically how many more points would we have won even if we'd signed another 2 players?

Much of the discussion was about us being reduced to a very skimpy squad and having next to zero injury cover for the remainder of the season.

You can't really assess whether those were sensible fears to have with so much of the season still left to play.

[paul_e]

So, sign no one or make a panic buy, which would you choose? No other options.

But outside of a message-board thought experiment, those aren't the only two options.

Here's one:

As an alternative if Emery wants Guendouzi and Williams and had agreements with the players, agents and clubs to complete those deals in the summer

Scribble out "the summer" on those agreements and stick "January 2023" there instead.

Not really, the point I'm making is that if you've tried to do that and it hasn't happened then you will, eventually, reach a point where you only have those 2 choices. My question isn't about critiquing the entire process throughout the month but whittling it down to the point where you know there are gaps in the squad so do you fill them with whatever you can get or do you wait until the next window. I think both of those options have risks and neither is good but that's pretty clearly where we were at the end of January.

[Pat Mustard]

If we had been in any danger of going down, or were right in the mix for a European place then we should have strengthened in January - that wasn't the case though, so it's not like under Bruce where we were gambling the house.  Nothing in life is ever certain, but if finishing 11th rather than 8th this season means next year we will have a better chance of Europe or a cup win because we are able to get in the players we actually want then it is a price worth paying.

We're 4 points off 6.  Now chuck Thuram / Tammy & Guendouzi (insert fantasy player here) into the squad.

Having played more games than everyone between 5th and 7th.  Since the window closed we have only lost to Arsenal, Man City and Leicester.  I'll give Leicester as a game where we should have done better, (and even then this was only a few days after the window so whoever we signed might not have played), but realistically how many more points would we have won even if we'd signed another 2 players?

Much of the discussion was about us being reduced to a very skimpy squad and having next to zero injury cover for the remainder of the season.

You can't really assess whether those were sensible fears to have with so much of the season still left to play.

We don't have a particularly skimpy squad though - if anything it was massively bloated before the window with the likes of Sanson, Nakamba, Bednarek, Ings et al eating up huge amounts in wages when they realistically might end up playing a handful of games between them.  A lot is made about us having 2 keepers on the bench, but the reality is that the whole 9 subs things is only a sop to the teams playing in Europe anyway - there are very few clubs who would bring on their 8th or 9 choice sub whatever the circumstance.

Since the window we have had injuries to Coutinho, Dendoncker, Kamara and Cash so it's not like we've been especially lucky on that front, and it hasn't seriously undermined our form.

[Risso]

Since the window we have had injuries to Coutinho, Dendoncker, Kamara and Cash so it's not like we've been especially lucky on that front, and it hasn't seriously undermined our form.

Dendoncker is a reserve at best anyway, and Coutinho was hardly first choice under Emery. Cash picked up his injury since we last played, so it's impossible to say what effect his absence will have on our form.

[Pat Mustard]

Since the window we have had injuries to Coutinho, Dendoncker, Kamara and Cash so it's not like we've been especially lucky on that front, and it hasn't seriously undermined our form.

Dendoncker is a reserve at best anyway, and Coutinho was hardly first choice under Emery. Cash picked up his injury since we last played, so it's impossible to say what effect his absence will have on our form.

The argument was what would we do if we got injuries.  It's pointed out that we have had them, and suddenly it's 'no, not those players'.  The point that was made was that we have a paper-thin squad, and these examples show that we have been able to cope with injuries without it having an impact so we were never that badly off.  If you take out 5 first team regulars from any club they would struggle, so we're not in some uniquely bad position.

Aside from the merits of waiting to spend money on players the manager actually wants though, the other important point for lots of us is we still think of how we got ourselves into the mess we did over the last 10 years (and actually further back than that if you want to look at it).  Going back to John Gregory and all the way up to Steve Bruce we spent huge money and wages on substandard, stop-gap players with no long-term planning.  We aren't Chelsea, Man City or now Newcastle who have effectively had access to unlimited money and can afford to make these mistakes.  For once we seem to have a manager who understands what we need to do, and if  it means holding back in a season when we aren't in any danger then I don't see the problem.  Especially so when he has already demonstrated that there is potentially a lot more talent in the existing squad than we might have given them credit for.

[chrisw1]

Aside from the merits of waiting to spend money on players the manager actually wants

I haven't seen a single person argue that we should sign players the manager doesn't want.  Where the fuck are you getting that from?

[Risso]

Since the window we have had injuries to Coutinho, Dendoncker, Kamara and Cash so it's not like we've been especially lucky on that front, and it hasn't seriously undermined our form.

Dendoncker is a reserve at best anyway, and Coutinho was hardly first choice under Emery. Cash picked up his injury since we last played, so it's impossible to say what effect his absence will have on our form.

The argument was what would we do if we got injuries.  It's pointed out that we have had them, and suddenly it's 'no, not those players'.  The point that was made was that we have a paper-thin squad, and these examples show that we have been able to cope with injuries without it having an impact so we were never that badly off.  If you take out 5 first team regulars from any club they would struggle, so we're not in some uniquely bad position.

Aside from the merits of waiting to spend money on players the manager actually wants though, the other important point for lots of us is we still think of how we got ourselves into the mess we did over the last 10 years (and actually further back than that if you want to look at it).  Going back to John Gregory and all the way up to Steve Bruce we spent huge money and wages on substandard, stop-gap players with no long-term planning.  We aren't Chelsea, Man City or now Newcastle who have effectively had access to unlimited money and can afford to make these mistakes.  For once we seem to have a manager who understands what we need to do, and if  it means holding back in a season when we aren't in any danger then I don't see the problem.  Especially so when he has already demonstrated that there is potentially a lot more talent in the existing squad than we might have given them credit for.

You seem to be a master of coming up with arguments that nobody has made.