The end of the January transfer window came so frantically that only now can we all take a step back and try to work out what the hell happened to the balance of power in the Premiership.
(A brief mention of transfers outside of England. Inter Milan signed Giampaolo Pazzini, improving a hideous situation only slightly. And El-Hadji Diouf has made Rangers around 14,000 times more funny than before)
The British transfer record was smashed twice in an hour, with Fernando Torres now holding the title. There are now new record fees for Spanish and English players, and the final day shenanigans with Andy Carroll not only completely overshadowed the £24 million Darren Bent deal, it made it seem practically sensible.
The conventional angle the sports writers have taken about this January has been the whole "Austerity? What austerity?" idea. But I can't be bothered writing along those lines because then I would be succumbing to the very cliches that this blog was set up to combat. Fight the power. Also, I would inevitably end up writing a thesis on government spending priorities. And you don't want to read that, do you? (If you do, you are a bit weird. Or you may be Natalie Portman, in which case I forgive you. Please marry me)
The Premiership has been detatched from the 'normal' rules of spending for many years now, and the bigger teams are in a world of their own; a crazy no-mans land of spending and counter-spending, a Twilight Zone of self-perceived improvement and depreciation that devours any economist foolish enough to enter. I'll stop now.
If you take only the January moves and compare them to each other, then Darren Bent would actually seem to be the best deal. It also has all the classic elements that a good January transfer should have; overpaying for a proven commodity, picking a bloke who will sell shirts etc etc.
Torres, to be honest, would have been worth more than £50 million before the season. A bad showing so far leads me to worry about his current health and ability though, and so I need to be more critical of this deal than I would like. Torres has been the best goalscorer in the Premiership for the past 3 years. Pair him with a fit Didier Drogba in some new formation and you could have a deadly threat. Not for long mind, as Didier is getting on. £50 million seems like quite a lot, then, and this move seems to be more of a point of emphasis for Chelsea and Roman Abramovich; "We will still buy big. Very big. We are still in this".
I actually find the David Luiz deal more interesting from a footballing standpoint, as it basically screams "Come back Ricardho Carvalho-type centre back!" at the top of its lungs. The Alex-Terry partnership has evidently been deemed as a failure. Considering the success the Carvalho-Terry pairing had, to attempt to recreate it seems sensible.
Where the Torres deal leaves Nicolas Anelka come the end of the season, I do not know. Personally, I would actually be looking to offload Drogba if the price was halfway decent. I make no apologies for being enamoured with Anelka's pure, natural finishing ability. He is the best finisher in the world in my book (call me mad if you will, but remember that you would therefore be reading the ramblings of a madman. That wouldn't make you seem so clever), an immense talent ruined by sullenness, petulence and managerial changeups.
Petulence? Sullenness? Domestic abuse? Yes, we're on to Andy Carroll! I'm struggling with this one a bit. Analysing the move, my dad initially told me that he would have sold Carroll only early in the transfer window, so the fee could be re-invested. I replied that £35 million is so much that I would have sold him as soon as the offer came in. Both in reasonable agreement so far. But then the issue of the price came up.
My dad thought that Carroll was never worth more than £20 million, but could have handled £25 mil due to the Bent deal providing leverage. I agreed at first, but then thought about the whole 'New Shearer' tag attatched to the man, and now think that £35 million, shockingly, wasn't as bad a deal as almost everyone is making out. Having the mantle of 'great English hope' raises the price by at least £10 million, as James Milner proves. And considering that the cash was evidently disposable to Liverpool due to the Torres deal, I can actually forgive them for this one. Provided Dalgleish gets the job permenantly of course; spending all that money on players only to hand them to another manager with no link to them would be a colossal mistake from which NESV would not recover. I did predict that they wouldn't last 3 years...
Luis Suarez and Edin Dzeko are now forgotten men, their 20 plus million moves swallowed up, understandably, by the last minute wheeling and dealing. Both are generic Football Manager signings, and that usually suggests that they are good. Dzeko so far looks out of place, too often dawdling weakly with the ball. I think, given time, he can be a better version of Roque Santa Cruz (Blackburn version). Which wouldn't be too bad.
Suarez, I think, is over-rated and does not appear to be a true finisher. But his skillset, in a potentially strong Liverpool team, should lend itself well to the Premiership. Carroll and Suarez can be a very good partnership but if Torres partnered the big man, he would get 25 goals. I do not think Suarez is quite good enough to match that profligacy. Perhaps, though, he can be the Owen to Carroll's Heskey; fine, the Owen and Heskey partnership didn't work, but the theory was sound.
The Darren Bent move shows that either Gerard Houllier is safe, or that Bent is part of a long term plan. Probably the latter.
Finally, we had further illustration that Harry Redknapp is a complete tosser. It's bad enough that he has hoarded every attacking midfielder with an inch of talent and preyed on financially screwed Portsmouth to take back all the old muckers he took there and bankrupted them with in the first place. Now, he spends deadline day putting in frankly insulting offers for Phil Neville and Charlie Adam. Where, oh where would they fit in at Spurs? Are Hutton and Corluka and Assou-Ekotto and Bale and Krancjar and Pienaar and Modric and Lennon and Van der Vaart not enough for you Harry? Or will you not rest until every decent, exciting player in England is stuck on your bench and we are never able to watch them again?
And to top it all off, he then goes and delivers a rant about how the transfer window is a nonsense. The same old spewl that he has delivered every year since the whole bloody concept began. It seems to work out all right for you each year Harry, and perhaps if you used some of the other 30 days of the window instead of leaving it to the last minute you could have signed the players you apparently needed so badly!
The fact that so many players seem to connect brilliantly with ill-principled dinosaurs like Redknapp is as damning an indictment on football as the current sexism 'scandal'.
Somewhere in this article, I seem to have lost the plot a bit. Sorry. I suppose it just shows you how easily things can run away from reality. Seriously, £24 million for Darren Bent...?
GM
No comments:
Post a Comment