As one of the quietest January transfer windows in recent memory limps towards its final hours, it’s all quiet at Liverpool’s front of house.
After a busy few days of fallout from Jurgen Klopp’s shock announcement that he is to leave at the end of the season, the idea of transfer speculation has been the furthest thought from the collective mind of a fanbase still reeling in shock.
The situations of Nat Phillips and Calvin Ramsay had appeared to have been the only subplots on the agenda for Thursday’s deadline day but their respective loan moves to Cardiff City and Bolton Wanderers were wrapped up with minimum fuss earlier this week. Bobby Clark is attracting loan interest but nothing had appeared imminent by Thursday morning.
For those who revel in the player trading months – the genre of supporter who treats them with the same reverence as actual on-field success – it’s been a month of frustration.
But for those who are aghast at the stranglehold that transfer talk has on the discourse around the modern game, the subdued nature of the window has been the most refreshing of changes.
With Everton’s breaching of the Premier League’s profit and sustainability rules leading to them being hit with a whopping 10-point deduction back in November and Nottingham Forest and the Blues once more being charged with the same offence last month, the rest of the league have been cutting their cloth more accordingly. The potential of falling foul of a similar sanction is too great a risk for many within the division, it seems.
As evidenced by the lack of big-money moves, these are lean times across the Premier League. The boom period has been most definitely consigned to previous windows, for now.
The early months of Todd Boehly’s Chelsea experiment, one that has led to them forking out wild abandon has been scaled back significantly and Mauricio Pochettino has been left unable to bring in the striker he is desperate for due to the obscene largesse of the last three windows under their American ownership.
Never was Chelsea’s unbalanced, bull-in-a-china-shop strategy more apparent than on Wednesday night when the strategic and considered approach favoured at Liverpool helped the Reds run up a 4-1 win against a bunch of expensive Pochettino misfits.
Mikel Arteta is another who would love to add a star striker to his ranks at Arsenal but the numbers that remain on the summer tab, when Declan Rice, Kai Havertz, Jurrien Timber and David Raya cost the Gunners around £200m, is still having a say in matters.
The rules are beginning to take hold so firmly, in fact, that Newcastle, owned by the impossible wealth of Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund, were last week having to hold internal discussions around selling key members of their squad to be able to provide Eddie Howe with the reinforcements he wants.
And if the Magpies – whose fanbase hideously lay claim to being the ‘richest club in the world’ – are so impeded by the restrictions then it should be assumed they are having a real effect elsewhere in the Premier League.
It’s all leading to a game that is less ostentatious in its presentation. Football is finally sobering up and, for many, it is not before time. The transfer fees are smaller, more modest and Tottenham’s £25m capture of Radu Dragusin from Genoa has been the biggest deal of the window so far. Back in the summer window, there were 44 players whose transfers cost more across the entire division.
Liverpool, of course, played their part too. A significantly restructured midfield might have been offset by the sales of Jordan Henderson and Fabinho, whose surprise moves to Saudi Arabia banked the club over £50m, but the signings of Alexis Mac Allister, Ryan Gravenberch, Dominik Szoboszlai and Wataru Endo, still cost the club the thick end of £150m. And that was without the aid of Champions League income too.
Klopp has always bristled at the suggestions of using the transfer market to aid his team’s fortunes, often preferring to extol the virtues of coaching on the pitch and while it has at times become obvious that forays into the transfer market are a necessity, it’s not difficult to image the Liverpool manager is on board with a more cautious outlook across the entire league when it comes to expenditure on transfers.
With a five-point lead at the top of the Premier League for a club who still have the FA Cup and Europa League to play for as well a Carabao Cup final at Wembley to look forward to, it’s impossible to pick major holes in the club’s strategy presently, even if it is one that is imposed on them by the strictly self-sustainable model preferred by owners Fenway Sports Group.
A different personality in the hot seat from next season might lead to some loosening of the FSG pursestrings during transfer windows but for now the views in the Boston boardroom and the manager’s office at the AXA Training Centre are generally aligned, even if there has been some privately terse conversations around the need to recruit at certain junctures under Klopp.
From day one on Merseyside, FSG have always believed in financial fair play and Liverpool’s ability to challenge through the revenue generated off the pitch as one of the biggest clubs in the world, but their grand vision is being aided by the money tap suddenly being turned off across the entire division.
And with FSG having seemingly stored so much for a rainy day the idea of a more sensible approach to transfer division-wide will surely only aid Liverpool’s ongoing rebuild under a new regime going forward as they look to continue recruiting at the sort of high level that has typified the Klopp era.
It is unlikely to last and clubs will once more jolt the transfer conveyor belt back into action in the summer months, but before then, one suspects Klopp is enjoying the peace and quiet of it all. If that is at all possible right now for the outgoing Liverpool boss.
