After the feast, famine came.
Last summer, Premier League clubs were on fire in the transfer market, spending a total of 24A record £400 million in signings.
In this year's winter window, the total transfer expenditure of Premier League clubs is only 96.2 million pounds, which is the second time in nearly 13 years that the total expenditure of the Premier League winter window has been less than 100 million pounds, which is about 700 million pounds less than the total expenditure of last year's winter window. In total, Premier League clubs have made just 17 permanent transfers in the winter window.
Liverpool, Arsenal and Manchester City are in contention for the Premier League title, but none have spent money on strengthening their first-team squad. The same goes for Chelsea, Manchester United and Newcastle.
Everton recently deducted points for violating the Premier League's Profitability and Sustainability Rules (PSR), so naturally they are tightening their belts to get by.
Tottenham (Timo Werner, £26.7 million for Dragusin), West Ham United (on loan for Phillips) and Aston Villa (£8 million for Morgan Rodgers) have made a move, but they have to pay for it.
There are not many new signings, but there are many players who have left the team, among which the most concerned is Jadon Sancho, who has returned to Dort, and Dier and Donny van de Beek have discounted their wages after they left the new team.
On the day of the closing of the window, loan transactions dominated. Fulham dragged on late at night to negotiate a loan move for Tobroja with Chelsea. Burnley have signed Rennes' Lorenz Assigon and Montpellier's Maxime Estevie on loan, Sheffield United have signed Everton's Mason Holgate on loan and Nottingham Forest have signed Portuguese Athletic's Rodrigo Ribeiro on loan.
The Bournemawin group have loaned Getafe's Enes Unal with a £14million buy-out clause. Permanent transfers are: Adam Wharton (Blackburn to Crystal Palace, £18 million, can float to £22 million), Brendan Rodgers (Middlesbrough to Villa, £8 million, can float to £15 million), Mats Sells (Strasbourg to Forest, £5 million), Kellan Vickers (Reading to Brighton, cost undisclosed) and Joe Gauge (Adelaide United to Aston Villa, fee undisclosed).In addition to PSR, the reason for the cold trading in the Premier League winter window is also the fact that the Africa Cup of Nations and the Asian Cup are held in the winter, and many teams are short of manpower and are reluctant to sell. The Saudi league spent a lot of money in last year's summer window, but the winter window has come to a halt as the clubs' foreign slots are full.
Will Premier League clubs buy big this summer? There is no doubt about it, they held it for a winter, and the summer will only get crazier.
Arsenal, Manchester United and Chelsea all need top-class centre-forwards and could have to shell out a nine-figure transfer to bring a player of Osimhen's caliber to the Premier League. Brentford has long stated that Ivan Toney can be sold, sky-high.
Liverpool's new manager will definitely get reinforcements, Manchester City will also make further reinforcements to the strong squad, and Newcastle, which is backed by big money, is likely not to be relentless. United's new shareholder, INEOS, should also show its determination to start a new era.
The summer window has always been a time of frequent major transfers, but under the pressure of PSR, clubs must also think more carefully and long-term when bringing in reinforcements.
But in any case, it should not happen that there are two consecutive transfer windows that are cold.
Sky Sports guest Gary Neville believes:
We often have a hard time doing business in January. But it's a bit strange that everyone spent nearly 900 million pounds on the winter window last year, which is completely different from what we used to know, and everyone used to say how difficult the winter window was.
Now the impact of the pandemic on the clubs is being felt. The Premier League's financial rules, violating the real penalty, clubs are cautious.
I don't think that's a bad thing, maybe it's a start, this winter window the clubs are more sensible and think about sustainability.
"I have a feeling that the summer window is going to explode again. The TV broadcast income is still the same as before, and the clubs will still receive money. I don't think it's because the clubs don't have money if they don't buy people in the winter window this year. Maybe it's the impact of the new crown epidemic, some losses have been recorded. It may also be that everyone has changed their way a little and thought more carefully.
The main thing is probably that FFP has come into play. Manchester United spent hundreds of millions of dollars and was close to hitting the line. It's not just bottom-of-the-table teams like Everton and Forest who are at risk of violating the rules, but the big teams also have to be more cautious. ”