[skyclad99]

my anagram generator cannot make that equal "a bunch of no mark tossa's from 5hitville staffs" no matter how many times i try !?  Sorry Stan you got that one wrong ! 

It reads fine as it is Albionic, and is uncannily accurate........

[gazberg]

Fulham DID manage to sign Chalobah and Quina from Watford after midnight. Only just noticed it.

[SmethDan]

Fulham DID manage to sign Chalobah and Quina from Watford after midnight. Only just noticed it.

Fulham's squad has an embarrassment of riches. Here's hoping Silva can't keep them all happy and they're riven with internal squabbles which lead to spectacular implosion.

[gazberg]

Fulham's squad has an embarrassment of riches. Here's hoping Silva can't keep them all happy and they're riven with internal squabbles which lead to spectacular implosion.

Ridiculous for this level but as you say he can still only have 11 playing at any time.

[Albionic]

Fulham's squad has an embarrassment of riches. Here's hoping Silva can't keep them all happy and they're riven with internal squabbles which lead to spectacular implosion.

Only this football forum would have "riven" used on it !

We just need some sesquipedalian terms now and we are replete !

[Baggies]

A deadline day deal I'm interested to follow is Ali McCann going from St Johnstone to Preston for around £1.5m.

St Johnstone have had an amazing 12 months, with their cup double and their draw against Galatasaray in Istanbul. McCann is described as a similar player to John McGinn - possibly ideal for our system.

At the price and his age, it could be a shrewd signing.

[Standaman]

Tuesday bought the circus to a close.

I will write up a summary for each of the Leagues and highlight any deals that caught my eye in the last 48 hours of the window. First up La Liga the figures in brackets are for the 20/21 summer window.

La Liga  21/22
Departures: 237  (282)
Income: £208m  (£473m)
Arrivals: 247 (306)
Transfer expenses: £264m (£346m)

Total balance: £-56m (£127m)

Overall fewer players were traded; these figures do include loans and loan fees where known. As ever the fees only tell half the story wages are hugely significant particularly in the light of La Liga’s FFP rules.

The story of the window was Barcelona's never ending struggle to balance the books which saw them finally move Griezmann to Atletico and Emerson Royale to Spurs bizarrely for a 50% profit in the same window they bought him from Betis. In order to accommodate Griezmann, Atletico moved Saul to Chelsea.

Elsewhere Real Madrid unloaded a lot of wages to clear the decks for an incoming Mbappe who did not arrive but the whole circus was not about signing the player this window but making sure they were in the box seat to sign him to a pre contract in January. It would have killed Real had PSG accepted their offer. They did however secure  Eduardo Camavinga for £28m from Stade Rennais and book a profit of £45m across the window.

Atletico were the big spenders along with the newly enriched Villareal and Sevilla accounted for about 50% of the total expenditure in La Liga and were the only clubs with a significant net spend.

[Standaman]

Part 2 .. Bundesliga

Bundesliga 21/22  (20/21)
Departures: 229 (231)
Income: £408m (£295m)
Arrivals: 253 (243)
Transfer expenses: £375m (£281m)

Total balance: £34m  (£13m)

For the second season running the German top flight turned a profit on it’s transfer dealings this is in part because of the financial constraints the 50 plus one ownership model places on clubs there is very little owner subsidy in German football. Even Red Bull largely balance their books now they have secured tier one football.

That is not to say that German football clubs can’t get themselves into a financial pickle but generally the model is more stable than most. One club in such a spot is relegated Schalke who aren’t included in the above figures but had a noteworthy window they turned over their entire squad with 25 departures due to their financial issues which have been further compounded by Covid-19 and relegation.

As with Spain a few clubs accounted for most of the expenditure. Bayern, Dortmund, Leipzig and Wolfsburg accounted for nearly 60% of the expenditure and only Wolfsburg and Bayern had significant net spends.

In the last 48 hours of the window a few deals went through with Marcel Sabitzer moving from Leipzig to Bayern for just £17m being the most significant. However Leipzig took advantage of the mess that is Barcelona to pick up the highly rated Ilaix Moriba for a similar figure.

Deadline day in Germany is pretty dull most of the clubs seem to have things wrapped up well before the window closes.

.

[LiamTheBaggie]

Deadline day in Germany is pretty dull most of the clubs seem to have things wrapped up well before the window closes.

Competent football clubs should not leave their summer business until the last 48 hours of the window. The Germans seemingly realise this.

Another good post Stan, thank you.

[Baggies]

That is not to say that German football clubs can’t get themselves into a financial pickle but generally the model is more stable than most. One club in such a spot is relegated Schalke who aren’t included in the above figures but had a noteworthy window they turned over their entire squad with 25 departures due to their financial issues which have been further compounded by Covid-19 and relegation.

Probably for the best given what some of the scummy fans did after Schalke’s relegation. For those who haven’t seen the footage, some fans waited at the ground after the game for when the players arrived back on the coach and proceeded to assault them. Awful security by the club as well. Another thing to remember when English fans are piled in on by some of their weirdly myopic critics.

[Standaman]

Probably for the best given what some of the scummy fans did after Schalke’s relegation. For those who haven’t seen the footage, some fans waited at the ground after the game for when the players arrived back on the coach and proceeded to assault them. Awful security by the club as well. Another thing to remember when English fans are piled in on by some of their weirdly myopic critics.

Slightly off topic while there is often much to admire in German football it is not the bed of roses that some would portray. The German game is a little bit too much in thrall of their fan culture and when that spills into violence then it gets pretty ugly.   

[Standaman]

Part 3....

Serie A is a world entirely unto itself. Imagine a League of Watford's huge squads, masses of player trading and coaches hired and fired in a blink of an eye. It is bonkers and aside from UEFA level FFP it is largely unregulated and not sustainable. The Italian football federation has started to make noises about some sort of financial control in the light of the madness.

Serie A 21/22 (20/21)

Departures: 582  (563)
Income: £452 m (£621m)
Arrivals: 231 (238)
Transfer expenses: £495m (£724m)

Total balance: - £43m (-£103m)

Never mind the money the League has lost 600 players across the last  two summer windows and I have checked they all seem to have at least 25 man squads. The question is where have they gone? 

Some have just been released and not picked up by anybody as yet about 35 this year. However the answer is the loan market.  Italian football functions entirely around the loan market the scale of which is staggering. There are almost as many players (340) on loan from Serie A clubs as playing for them.

The team with the biggest stable of loaned players is Atlanta who currently have over 60 players playing elsewhere. They range from structured deals with an obligation to buy that Italian clubs are particularly fond of e.g. Romero going to Spurs to teenagers picking valuable game time in Serie C. Atlanta are the ultimate trading machine and are unique among the small city clubs in being able to compete with the teams from Rome, Milan, Turin and Naples.   

However it amounts to a giant trading model which basically allows Italian football to pretend it isn’t flat broke because deals are back end loaded and every now and then players can be exported for a big fee which keeps the whole edifice from crumbling.

Juve were desperate to get Ronaldo off the books and managed to unload him for a fee to United although with instalments spread over 5 years (i.e. two years after his Man United contract has expired) This would would have been impressive were it not for the same club persuading Sassuolo to part with Locatelli on a two year loan which is Dick Turpin level robbery (the player wanted the Juve deal badly and wasn’t open to alternatives)

It is this type of deal that keeps the plates spinning and the illusion of solvency. In the case of Inter the plates have come crashing down. They sold £144m of talent and spent £34m on filling some of the gaps as the owners basically ran out of money.

Roma have indulged Mourinho and given they have £200m of debt and no European football (which is very important in Italian football and marks out the haves from the have nots) It is very much make or break.

The end of the window is always frenetic in Italy with over 200 deals going through on deadline day alone,  it is difficult to pick out what is significant among all activity but Praet, Kean and Anguissa  all being recycled from the Premier League (on loan of course) suggests where the league is at.

The smaller clubs are trading like crazy just to stay afloat and one deal I thought noteworthy was Centre Forward David Strulic arriving at Spezia for £2m from Slovan Bratislava, a young player with a bright future ahead of him but that could easily be lost in the swirl of Serie A.

I am inclined to think that Italian  football clubs exist largely to trade players and actually playing football matches must be a terrible distraction.

[Standaman]

Part 4 .....

Ligue1 21/22 (20/21)

Departures: 272 (274)
Income: £331m (£336m)
Arrivals: 303 (299)
Transfer expenses: £355m (£400m)

Total balance -£24m (-£64m)

The numbers that matter aren’t included in the above figures and everything else in Ligue needs to be set in the context of Messi’s move to PSG.

The transfer is officially a “free transfer” because Messi was out of contract and no fee was due to Barcelona.  The signing on fee was reportedly €25m (£20m) and his annual salary is €84m (this is the gross figure rather than the widely reported net figure which was the number briefed by PSG to make the wages seem slightly less excessive).

The wages are more than the entire payrolls of nearly every other Ligue 1 club and the signing-on fee is greater than the net spend of all but Nice, Marseille and Rennes. 

 PSG also signed a bunch of other players including Ramos and Wijnaldum (also fee free) and spent the biggest single fee (£54m)  on a player when they bought in  Achraf Hakimi from Inter and without their activity Ligue 1 would have a £40m profit on transfers.

The French clubs with monied owners Rennes, Monaco Marseille, Nice and Troyes (part of the City group) spent every other club were net sellers. Lyon and defending champions Lille in particular let a lot of talent go. 

In the last 48 hours of the window there weren't huge numbers of deals and  Stade Rennais were at the centre of two of the most significant.  Eduardo Camavinga moving to Real Madrid for £28m. The 18 year old Central Midfielder is one of the hottest prospects in world football it will be hard for him to live up to the hype. The club quickly moved to pick up Centre Forward Gaëtan Laborde from Montpellier for £13m.

There are winners and losers down there and you don’t want to be on the wrong side of that line. Stade Rennais are on the right side of that line, Montpellier are not, they do inhabit two very different worlds and PSG live in a parallel universe where £1m a week footballers are a reality.

[Standaman]

Departures: 248 (256)
Income: £579m (£381m)
Arrivals: 248
Transfer expenses: £1,217m (£1,285m)

Total balance: £-638m (-£904m)

The biggest badass football league in the world, the EPL just dwarfs the rest when it comes to transfers.  The net spend of over £638m was more than the other 4 major leagues combined by a factor of five. That is how completely mental the market is.

The last 48 hours were typically busy. The noteworthy deals were as follows.

Ronaldo to Man U. If you can get past the hysteria you realise this is a great deal for Juventus who have got rid of the millstone of the Ronaldo contract and extricated themselves from one of the worst deals any club has ever struck for a player. Man United even paid a fee

West Ham did some of the business they needed to do bringing in Alex Kral initially on loan as another option in central midfield but instead of getting in a serviceable back up to Antonio  they spent £27m on Nikola Vlasic who is an excellent player but an attacking midfielder and the squad is already well stocked in that area

Chelsea strengthened further with the loan signing of Saul from Athletico

Brighton picked up two players who they did not seem to have any real need for, Marc Cucurella from Getafe and Abdallah Sima from Slavia Prague the latter was loaned straight out to Stoke. Yet seem to have left themselves a little light at Centre Back and maybe short of a Centre Forward like  Odsonne Edouard who joined arch rivals Crystal Palace for a reasonable fee of £14m.

Norwich, who have been one of the busier teams, secured the loan signing with an option to buy Ozan Kabak from Schalke. It was odd that he was one of the last players out of the door at Schalke given that he had arrived on loan at Liverpool last January to much fanfare. While he took a little bit of time to settle at Liverpool and didn’t quite live up to expectations I still think it is a fairly significant coup on Norwich’s part and a few teams further up the football hierarchy have missed a trick here.

Emerson Royal joined Spurs from Barcelona. With Spurs paying £25m to buy out everything which saw Barcelona book a nominal profit of £10m on the deal and complete the last somersault in the financial gymnastics routine which allowed them to register their new players for the La Liga deadline. About 20% of the fee has gone to Betis who had been the junior partner in a very complicated deal which brought the young Brazilian Right Back to Spain in 2019. 

Daniel James moved from Man United to Leeds for an initial £26m. Seems a bit of an overpay for a player whose Old Trafford career started brightly but ran out of steam lately. Long term target for the Yorkshire club will be interesting to see how he fits in. 

Finally Ademola Lookman is on the move again. Having looked bright in a poor Fulham team he joined Leicester on loan with an option to buy. If ever a young player just needed a home and an opportunity to play regularly it is Lookman who has changed clubs every summer for the last 4 years.

The window closed with a lot of unfinished business and various fan groups in meltdown mode on social media and I’m fairly sure a number of players who are not where they want to be . It is a function of inflated wages, inflated expectations and living with neighbours who are richer than God.   

[Standaman]

And finally part 6 ...

The Championship.

21/22 (20/21)
 
Departures 303 (402)
Income: £112m (£316m)

Arrivals: 291 (341)
Transfer expenses: £43m (£67m)

Total balance: £69m (£249m)

Across Europe there has always been a point in the pyramid where you hit the no fee zone below which there aren’t fees nearly all transfers are either frees or loans with the occasional sale up the pyramid which keeps clubs afloat and might trigger the odd smallish fee being spent.

Nearly all the second tier competitions look like this: all the clubs not in European football in the smaller leagues and even the lesser lights in the big 5 leagues (other than the Premier League of course) are in that situation.  The pandemic has meant this line has started further up the pyramid and has clearly arrived in earnest in the Championship.

Some numbers, half the teams in the Division spent zero on permanent transfers. Fulham, who have the last owners prepared to bankroll their club and push the limits of FFP accounted for nearly 50% of the Division’s spend. There were only 3 transactions for more than £5m (Fulham accounted for 2 of them) The income from fees has also dried up falling from just over £300m last year to £100m this.

Eight clubs did have a net positive spend but aside from Fulham and Middlesbrough it was less than £2m. In the last two seasons 60 players have been axed from Championship squads.

Predictably there was very little activity in the last 48 hours of the window but these are deals that went through

Swansea got busy.  Michael Obafemi joined for £1.8m from Southampton I think they were asking for up to £10m last summer when we were rumoured to be interested. They picked up Nico Williams on loan from Liverpool and midfielder Oliver Ntcham on a free from Celtic. They also sold Connor Roberts to Burnley and Jamal Lowe to Bournemouth

Bournemouth paid £2.6m for Ryan Christie from Celtic this along with the Lowe deal (£1,5m) are the first fees the South Coast club has paid for permanent signings since relegation despite making in excess of £100m in sales.
 
Nathaniel Chalobah joined Fulham on a free. This is an interesting dynamic: the player had 12 months left on his contract and had been offered a new one on similar terms but had declined the deal. Watford chose to release him to Fulham who were quite literally the only Championship able to pick up his current wages and only if there was no fee. Downcycling players from the Premier League squad fringes into the Championship is a thing of the past. 

Domingos Quina also made the same journey from Herts to West London  on loan with an option to buy.

Watford continued to prune their squad moving Andre Gray to QPR on loan which is in effect a free transfer because his contract at Watford expires next summer

Stoke City made the second most expensive signing in the division by proxy bringing in right winger Abdallah Sima who Brighton had signed from Sparta Prague for £7m earlier on deadline day.

Sheffield United picked up Robin Olsen from Roma on loan and Gibbs-White from Wolves also on loan.

The loan deals for Andraz Sporar and James Léa Siliki from Sporting and Stade Rennais rounded out an interesting window for Middlesbrough who seem to be the only Championship club casting their net further afield. How effective it will be remains to be seen but both of their final day signings should be solid acquisitions at Championship level.

Welcome to year 2 of the new normal. Overall the quality and size of squads is down the wage bills are down but still have someway to go to hit the 50% reduction required to make the Championship sustainable 

[Baggies]

One of the more interesting signings of the season as Ricardo Pepi has signed for Augsberg. 18 year old USA International striker who has overtaken Dike as the "next big thing" US forward, he has 15 goals in the MLS already. A really exciting player worth monitoring this year.

[johnny Cash]

Pepi is 19 next week so a couple of years younger than Dike, but Dike has a better goal ratio in the MLS. There’s a 23 year old argentine at New York who is the other hot property in that league who guardiola has spoken about highly so it will be interesting to see how all three do. I’ve seen it said online that Dike is the better of the three so getting him for half the cost of one (and likely the other when he moves) looks good business. There’s an arrival about Dike and Pepi moving here: 

https://deadspin.com/the-fight-for-the-usmnt-s-9-spot-moves-to-the-european-1848294701/amp

[gazberg]

Ethan Laird signing for Bournemouth on loan from Man Utd who loaned him to Swansea?!

[LiamTheBaggie]

Everton signing Nathan Patterson for around £12m rising to £16m from Rangers.

Long term replacement for Seamus Coleman. Good signing that as he looks a fantastic footballer.

[bartleygreen baggie]

Chris Wood off to Newcastle 25m!

[alex1]

Sky Sports linking Luis Suarez to Villa, and according to reports in Spain, has turned down offers elsewhere to link up with Gerrard again and has already spoken to him.
If it happens, I'm sure Albion fans would be very fair and balanced in their treatment of him. 

[KYA]

Sky Sports linking Luis Suarez to Villa, and according to reports in Spain, has turned down offers elsewhere to link up with Gerrard again and has already spoken to him.
If it happens, I'm sure Albion fans would be very fair and balanced in their treatment of him. 

Looks like Gerrard is after a quick fix first Coutinho and now Suarez he may not be a bad appointment after all if he blows a lot of cash on players whose valuation is on the decrease.

[bosh]

Owners seem desperate to be seen as a potential top 6 side and buying / loaning players  post their best may look good on paper but won't work long term.  Going to be very expensive and I can't see the benefits from this tactic from a business or sensible point of view.

[gazberg]

#sufc winger Oli Burke has agreed to join #qpr on loan. Paperwork being completed.

Rob Dorsett

[KYA]

What a wasted career that lad is having.