After endless speculation, Milner finally became a City player this summer

This summer was relatively quiet as far as football transfer activity goes, prompting Rio Ferdinand to name it the ‘recession window’ as opposed to the more conventional ‘transfer window’ by which we know it. Rich boys Manchester City handed out the expected fortunes in the form of transfer fees and contracts, along with which there were few surprises.

Most shocking, perhaps, was the failure of Arsenal to bring-in a proven goalkeeper with both Premier and Champions League experience, despite spending the whole summer courting Fulham’s Aussie international Mark Schwarzer amongst others, and their cheeky neighbours Tottenham waiting until the eleventh hour to table an offer of £8m for Raphael van der Vaart – which, if reports are to be believed, was a cool £10m less than previous bids from the likes of Bayern, Schalke and Bremen!

Staying with Spurs, ‘Arry Redknapp managed to close a deal with former Arsenal and Chelsea centre-half William Gallas, now at his 3rd London club in 4 years, and he will provide both essential Champions League experience and the necessary cover for Ledley ‘one game per week’ King and Michael Dawson.
Liverpool brought in Joe Cole, Raul Meireles, Christian Poulsen and Paul Konchesky but, somewhat surprisingly, it’s the lesser known Milan Jovanovic from Standard Liege who’s thus far performed most strongly for his new club and it’s their failure to land a big-name striker to help shoulder the burden currently upon Fernando Torres which is making the headlines.

Chelsea owner Roman Abramovich’s chequebook was spared a thrashing in a close-season where young Brazilian Ramires was the only major addition to the champions’ squad. If rumours are to be believed then the £17m price tag is a snip as this guy can bring special things to the squad. Joe Cole may have departed but Chelsea did manage to entice Israeli midfielder Yossi Benayoun to make the move to the Bridge in his stead and paid the Anfield outfit £5.5m to procure his services. Though he’s over a year younger than Yossi, any Chelsea fan who feels that they should’ve fought harder to keep Cole need only look at the stats: Benayoun has scored goals by the hatload for every club he’s represented. At international level, he’s scored more than double the amount of goals achieved by Cole for England and in the last two seasons Yossi has managed 18 goals in 87 matches for Liverpool whereas Cole could only muster 5 goals in 58 matches, with injuries denying the Englishman his chance to play consistently.

Sheikh Mansour’s Manchester City off-loaded problem children Craig Bellamy (Cardiff City, loan) and Robinho (AC Milan), whilst managing to bring in (problem child?) Mario Balotelli, Yaya Toure and the impressively solid Jerome Boateng. James Milner has also joined Mancini’s revolution from Aston Villa in a deal worth £26m, which saw the talented Stephen Ireland go the other way and is a move City may live to regret.

Other deals such as Chamakh to Arsenal, Hernandez to United and Silva to City were all closed around the time the transfer window first opened and will add a bit of Champions League experience/aerial ability, goalscoring prowess and attacking flair respectively to their new clubs, but it is the shrewd acquisitions made by the less successful (and arguably less attractive) sides on or around the final day of trading which we should salute before closing: Sunderland landed Ghanaian goal machine Asamoah Gyan (£13m), whilst Stoke were celebrating the signing of Eidur Gudjohnsen and, perhaps most surprisingly, Aleks Hleb has joined namesake Alex McLeish at Birmingham City on a season-long loan, despite citing his inability to settle in England as one of the main reasons for wanting to leave Arsenal in 2008.

We’re in for one hell of a season, so enjoy the ride at the home of football betting – Titan Bet, with unbeatable odds on the best leagues and competitions worldwide.

Tags: , ,

You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.