SteemSports Presenter: @feekayo
SteemSports Editor: @writingamigo
The transfer window has now slammed shut everywhere in Europe. The deadline in Spain came at 11 pm local time on the 1st of September. The last window to shut down was the Turkish transfer window; which meant that Turkish clubs could do their business till 11 pm local time on the 2nd of September.
A lot has gone down in the last three months since the windows first opened up, and the floodgates have poured out tonnes of mint currency from one club to another. No one spends more than English teams; that is one of the main reasons for the strength and competitiveness of the English Premier League.
England's top flight sides found themselves spending just above 1.62 billion pounds in 469 deals. This represents around 25% of the total financial outlay of all European clubs in every league.
In every transfer window, there are winners and losers, and while some club sides absolutely struck out in the window, others did pretty well. We at Steemsports have earlier covered the former; now it’s time to get into the latter. The winners of the Transfer window at deadline day.
Manchester United
Coming into the transfer window, Manchester United had a clear list of things they wanted. While they were toothless for most of the last season in attack. They possessed one of the strongest defenses in the league. A big reason for said toothlessness was because their main playmaker Paul Pogba was shackled with the unenviable duty of patrolling the midfield in a defensive capacity, cleaning up messes even though that is not exactly what he excels at; this, coupled with the fact that Zlatan Ibrahimovich was inexplicably wasteful. The fact he scored 29 goals last season was more of a testament to how many chances Manchester United can create rather than to his ability to put the ball in the net.
So heading into the window. United found themselves in need of a world class defensive midfielder to partner with the ever reliable Ander Herrara or Michael Carrick; basically a footballer with brains (unlike a certain Belgian tree) and with experience at the top level. Also, a world class/ soon to be world class striker reliable in one on one situations. Added to that list was a winger capable of beating wing backs with pace and putting crosses into the box and a center back. With those four needs met, word on the streets is that United will finally be a complete team with all the pieces needed to compete at the very top.
Well not all those needs were met, but they came really close, Romelu Lukaku has been signed up and has scored 3 goals in his first three games. Victor Lindelof has joined from Benfica to add more steel to an already solid backline. But the biggest coup of them all was inexplicably convincing Chelsea to part with Nemanja Matic for just 40 million pounds.
So even though United couldn’t add an out and out winger to their books, they still ended the window looking very strong and ready to compete on multiple frontiers next season
West Bromwich Albion & Tony Pulis
Without much fuss, West Brom performed extremely well in the transfer window. Few people were paying attention to a mid-table team which pulled nothing less than five top transfers out of the hat.
Nobody would take West Brom to be one of the most attractive destinations in the League, but somehow Tony Pulis’s side convinced PSG midfield stalwart Grzegorz Krychowiak to join. Grzegorz had joined PSG one year earlier from Sevilla in what was one of their stellar purchases. One year later he hadn’t set the world on fire since then, but his quality remains unquestionable.
When you add further stellar purchases like Kieran Gibbs from Arsenal, Jay Rodriguez, Oliver Burke and Gareth Barry, you see a pattern of quality purchases for uninflated prices in what can be said to be a mixture of quality, experience, and youth.
Swansea and Paul Clement
What can be said here? Swansea was undoubtedly one of the poorer performers of last season. In fact, it took an extra ordinary effort from two stars, Fernando Llorente and Gylfi Sigurdsson for the swans to survive the relegation scrap. These two stars are not with them anymore.
One might be tempted to call for panic for the loss of their star players, but when you consider how well their transfer window went, coupled with their strong start to the season, one cannot help but feel excited for what is going on at the Liberty Stadium
Llorente at 32 has been replaced by a younger and much hungrier striker who is arguably better while not as experienced in Tammy Abraham who is on loan from Chelsea. Add that to the recent loan to buy acquisition of Renato Sanches from Bayern Munich; a lot with a draft of others and you have something really special.
I was surprised when Swansea, announced they managed to borrow Renato Sanches from Bayern Munich. I think he will move to Liverpool and it turns out to be wrong
really impressed by WBA , they should battle everyone this season, maybe even better than Arsenal ...
That's really cool ,, upvoted and resteem 😊
bravo MU (Mescester United )
I think Morata is the best transfer of this summer. He has already scored two goals for Chelesea