Manchester United look as though they’re on course to ‘win the transfer window’, but that doesn’t often bode well.
Thank you for reading this post, don't forget to subscribe!Joshua Zirkzee and ‘transfer coup’ Leny Yoro look set to be joined by a decent defensive midfielder – probably Manuel Ugarte, maybe Martin Zubimendi – while they’re also holding talks with Bayern Munich over moves for both Matthijs de Ligt and Noussair Mazraoui.
They’re keen on Xavi Simons, which may prove to be a step too far, though Paris Saint-Germain’s interest in Jadon Sancho offers swap potential for that deal, in a two-birds-one-stone situation that would see one Red Devils pariah follow another out of the club, after Mason Greenwood left for Marseille.
It all sounds great, but does transfer window glory typically lead to success? We’ve looked at the last ten ‘winners of the transfer window’ before Red Devils fans get too carried away.
We’ve tried our best to avoid outcome bias, and have included the actual winners of each window based on what the players signed have achieved. We’ve only considered player purchases and not sales, as it’s very hard to judge whether a team made the right choice in letting a player leave or not.
January 2024
‘Winners’: Tottenham
Dane Scarlett (loan recall, Ipswich), Timo Werner (loan, Leipzig), Radu Dragusin (£25m, Genoa).
Winners: Crystal Palace
Daniel Munoz (£6.8m, Genk), Adam Wharton (£22m, Blackburn)
Werner was Werner and Dragusin showed more in the Euros than he did for Tottenham, though that may be about to change. Daniel Munoz was great while Wharton earned an England call through some absurdly confident displays for Palace that caught the eye of the elite.
Summer 2023
‘Winners’: Brighton
Joao Pedro (£30m, Watford), James Milner (free, Liverpool), Mahmoud Dahoud (free, Borussia Dortmund), Bart Verbruggen (£16.3m, Anderlecht), Igor (£14.5m, Fiorentina), Carlos Baleba (£23.2m, Lille), Ansu Fati (loan, Barcelona).
Winners: Arsenal
Kai Havertz (£65m, Chelsea), Jurrien Timber (£34.3m, Ajax), Declan Rice (£100m, West Ham), David Raya (loan, Brentford).
We assumed Brighton had done it again and were particularly impressed by the arrivals of Dahoud and Fati, who both did very little. Kai Havertz was just a marginal gain in our eyes, but proved to be more than for Arsenal that while Declan Rice lived up to his price tag and David Raya won his battle with Aaron Ramsdale without any real trouble.
January 2023
‘Winners’: Chelsea
David Datro Fofana (£10.5m, Molde), Benoit Badiashile (£33m, Monaco), Andrey Santos (£18m, Vasco da Gama), Joao Felix (£9.7m loan, Atletico Madrid), Mykhaylo Mudryk (£62m, Shakhtar Donetsk), Noni Madueke (£30m, PSV Eindhoven), Malo Gusto (£26.3m, Lyon), Enzo Fernandez (£106.8m, Benfica).
Winners: Wolves
Matheus Cunha (loan, Atletico Madrid), Mario Lemina (£9.7m, Nice), Pablo Sarabia (£4.4m), Craig Dawson (£3.3m, West Ham), Dan Bentley (£50,000, Bristol City), Joao Gomes (£15m, Flamengo).
Chelsea shattered winter spending records by shelling out well over £300m to sign a World Cup-winning midfielder, a hugely talented winger from under the nose of Arsenal and some other squad padding, none of whom have proven themselves worth the outlay other than Gusto, and maybe Madueke. Cunha, Lemina and Gomes have all proved to be wise additions by Wolves.
Summer 2022
‘Winners’: Manchester City
Erling Haaland (£51m, Borussia Dortmund), Stefan Ortega (free, Arminia Bielefeld), Kalvin Phillips (£45m, Leeds), Sergio Gomez (£11m, Anderlecht), Manuel Akanji (£16.7m, Borussia Dortmund).
Winners: Manchester City
A close call with Newcastle, who signed Nick Pope, Sven Botman and Alexander Isak, and Kalvin Phillips very nearly screwed it up for City, but it’s hard to claim a transfer window is anything other than a rip-roaring success when the striker goes on to break all goalscoring records while another new centre-back shines immediately and throughout a treble-winning season.
January 2022
‘Winners’: Newcastle
Kieran Trippier (£12m, Atletico Madrid), Chris Wood (£25m, Burnley), Bruno Guimaraes (£35m, Newcastle), Matt Targett (loan, Aston Villa), Dan Burn (£13m, Brighton).
Winners: Newcastle
Chris Wood wasn’t great, Matt Targett was fine, other than that they absolutely nailed it in their first window with the Saudi gold. Shame Manchester City may be about to poach the best of all of them.
Summer 2021
‘Winners’: Manchester United
Tom Heaton (free, Aston Villa), Jadon Sancho (£73m, Borussia Dortmund), Raphael Varane (£41m, Real Madrid), Cristiano Ronaldo (£12.85m, Juventus).
Winners: Crystal Palace
Michael Olise (£8m, Reading), Jacob Montes (undisclosed, Revolution), Remi Matthews (free, Sunderland), Marc Guehi (£18m, Chelsea), Joachim Andersen(£14.9m, Lyon), Conor Gallagher (loan, Chelsea), Will Hughes (£6m, Watford), Odsonne Edouard (£15m, Celtic).
‘This is it: Solskjaer must deliver a meaningful title challenge, as well as a trophy. Ronaldo makes it so, if Varane and Sancho hadn’t already.’ Yikes. Meanwhile Palace signed a Championship star they would sell three years later to Bayern Munich for eight times what they paid for him, a centre-back who’s just been England’s best player at Euro 2024, an excellent partner at the back and a Chelsea midfielder on loan who was named their player of the season.
January 2021
‘Winners’: West Ham
Frederik Alves (undisclosed, Silkeborg), Said Benrahma (£20m, Brentford), Jesse Lingard (loan, Manchester United).
Winners: Brighton
Moises Caicedo (£4.5m, Independiente del Valle).
Lingard was really bloody good but there may never have been better business by a Premier League football club in history than Brighton buying Caicedo for £4.5m before selling him to Chelsea for £115m – a British record transfer fee – two-and-a-half years later.
Summer 2020
‘Winners’: Chelsea
Hakim Ziyech (£36m, Ajax), Timo Werner (£47.7m, Leipzig), Xavier Mbuyumba (free, Barcelona), Ben Chilwell (£45m, Leicester), Malang Sarr (free, Nice), Thiago Silva (free, PSG), Kai Havertz (£71m, Bayer Leverkusen), Edouard Mendy (£22m, Rennes).
Winners: Aston Villa
Ben Chrisene (undisclosed, Exeter), Matty Cash (£16m, Nottingham Forest), Ollie Watkins (£28m, Brentford), Emiliano Martinez (£17m, Arsenal), Bertrand Traore (£17m, Lyon), Ross Barkley (loan, Chelsea).
Chelsea fans will say it was worth it given they won the Champions League at the end of the 2020/21 season, but that was more down to Thomas Tuchel replacing Frank Lampard than anything else. Four years on and only Chilwell remains and if they could find a buyer for him they would sell him. Meanwhile Villa were signing a goalkeeper that would go on to win and star in a World Cup, a striker who would score the winner for England in a Euros semi-final on the back of a season in which he was the best in the Premier League, and a decent right-back.
January 2020
‘Winners’: Tottenham
Gedson Fernandes (loan, Benfica), Giovani Lo Celso (£27.2m, Real Betis), Steven Bergwijn (£27m, PSV Eindhoven).
Winners: Manchester United
Bruno Fernandes (£67.8m, Sporting Lisbon), Nathan Bishop (undisclosed, Southend), Odion Ighalo (loan, Shanghai Greenland Shenhua).
We’re not proud of ourselves – quite the opposite, in fact – but we said the Red Devils ‘paid through the nose’ for Fernandes in what was a ‘personal triumph for whomever was sitting opposite Ed Woodward at the negotiating table’ while being entirely hoodwinked by a decent loan spell from Giovani Lo Celso and the speed of Steven Bergwijn.
Summer 2019
‘Winners’: Everton
Jonas Lossl (free, Huddersfield), Andre Gomes (£22m, Barcelona), Fabian Delph (£8.5m, Manchester City), Jean-Philippe Gbamin (£25m, Mainz), Moise Kean (£30m, Juventus), Djibril Sidibe (loan, Monaco), Alex Iwobi (£35m, Arsenal)
Winners: Aston Villa
Jota (£4m, Birmingham), Anwar El Ghazi (£8m, Lille), Wesley Moraes (£22m, Club Brugge), Kortney Hause (£3m, Wolves), Matt Targett (£14m, Southampton), Tyrone Mings (£20m, Bournemouth), Ezri Konsa (£12m, Brentford), Bjorn Engels (£7m, Stade Reims), Trezeguet (£8.75m, Kasimpasa), Douglas Luiz (£12.5m, Manchester City), Tom Heaton (£8m, Burnley).
‘Moise Kean cures an ailment which has only been partially treated since Romelu Lukaku left,’ we crowed, further praising the additions of Delph, Gomes and Iwobi on top of ‘the coup of the transfer window’. Sigh. Tyrone Mings, Ezri Konsa and Douglas Luiz barely got a mention at the time but that trio for under £50m is very good business.
