A summer English transfer window of record breaks
Chelsea manager Enzo Maresca has been busy in the transfer window with Conor Gallagher leaving the club to join Atletico Madrid. Photo: PA Wire.
The Summer transfer window for the Premier league and the Football League closed on Friday night and it was a window which probably took everybody by surprise from top to bottom. Over £2billion was spent on transfers in the Premier League alone with Manchester City spending the least amount of the twenty clubs. In fact, to show you how big a transfer window it was for some and just how much money it around the lower leagues in England, Birmingham City a League One side spent more money that Manchester City done in the past window. Birmingham broke the League One record transfer three times in the summer and for their deadline day signing of Jay Stansfield from Fulham. The record before the Summer was the transfer of Will Grigg to Sunderland for £3million in 2019 which was made famous on the Sunderland Til I Die documentary on Netflix as it was a panic signing and probably overspending.
Birmingham ‘modestly’ broke the record twice signing Willum Thór Willumsson and Christoph Klarer but then the obliterated it by signing Jay Stansfield for £15 million initially and it is a fee that can rise to £20 million which is crazy. Stansfield has also signed a seven-year contract, and you can guarantee that his wages will be Championship level wages for him to drop down to League One to sign for Birmingham.
It isn’t the first time that Birmingham have gazumped their League One rivals this season either. I spoke to an ex-teammate of mine who has just moved into the coaching side for a League One side and after a game recently the manager of the opposition told him how they had agreed a fee with a certain players club and then offered that player personal terms of £10k a week (very reasonable for the level) only for him to sign for Birmingham on reportedly £17k a week which shows you the money they are playing with at the moment.
This shows just how much money is on offer in League One along with League Two and the National League also. For years Irish players moving to the UK were criticised for taking a backwards step in moving to the lower leagues in the UK and I understand how some supporters in Irish football may think that, but the fact of the matter is that majority of the clubs had and still have more money to spend on wages that what Irish clubs have. The shop window then of a player in League Two or League One with the right age profile then means they can jump another division and earn a lot more than the potential significant money they are already earning. While that will still be the same going forward there has been a small shift in recent times where some players have come back to the League of Ireland for an increase in their wages and big contracts but I’m not sure how long that can go on for especially if they are at clubs that don’t get European football.
One of the biggest spenders in the transfer window were Chelsea and they have somehow found a loophole around FFP spending (Financial Fair Play) with the length of contracts that they are offering their new signings. How they are going to keep their players happy is anybody’s guess but I suppose to blow for those players out of favour will be softened significantly by the fact that they are on crazy money and have to do half of the work now without the pressures of performances. For Chelsea surely it will all come to a head at some stage. They are offsetting the FFP losses by selling players who have come through their academy like Conor Gallagher Chelsea (and other clubs) have been able to take advantage of the profitability and sustainability rules (PSR) in order to balance their books. Chelsea have missed a trick though as they could have sold Conor Gallagher last summer to either Tottenham Hotspur or West Ham United for significantly more than the £34million they got which would have been able to offset bigger losses.
It wasn’t just incomings where there were big fees in the Premier League. It was a record transfer window for transfer fees received by Premier League clubs of £1.45 billion. £40 million of that was spent on Ivan Toney as he moved to Al Ahly in Saudi Arabia. It would be easy to criticise Toney for taking the money and moving to Saudi when he was just hitting his prime as a striker at 28 years old but as a player who has worked his way up through the leagues playing in League Two, One the Championship and then the Premier League I can see why he has taken the money and cashed in. He is also young enough to go there for three years set himself and future generations of his family up for life and still come back to the Premier League at 31/32 years old and make a huge impact. Time will tell if that is the route he goes down, but he has ended his international career with the decision he has made for sure and that is a decision that he will have to live with but again he has decided that the money he will be earning over there will be enough to soften that blow.
