Who Will Win The 2010/2011 Premier League Title?

 

January Transfer Window 2011

So the British January transfer window closed at 23:00 GMT last night and it saw a total £218,525,000 spent during the past month by English Premier League clubs, in a time when a recession is hitting the country.

There were a few big deals done in the first thirty days of the transfer, such as Emmanuel Adebayor’s loan move from Manchester City to Real Madrid, West Ham’s capture of Hoffenheim striker Demba Ba andDavid Bentley’s loan move from Tottenham to Birmingham. A few more deals included Jean Makoun’s £6m move from Olympique Lyonnais to Aston Villa, Darren Bent’s move from Sunderland to Villa for £18m to rise to £24m, also the loan move for Wayne Bridge from Manchester City to West Ham.  The biggest deal from this period however was Manchester City using pennies of their fountain of cash to buy the highly rated Wolfsburg striker Edin Dzeko for £27m.

These deals would have made for a fine bit of business in the transfer window themselves but the final day of the transfer window saw the British transfer record broken twice and Liverpool and Chelsea spend a record £134million between them in just one day.

There were four big transfers expected going into the final day:

Torres from Liverpool to Chelsea

Andy Carroll from Newcastle to Liverpool

Charlie Adam from Blackpool to Liverpool

Luis Suarez from Ajax to Liverpool.

The first big deal of the day went to Birmingham who brought in ex-Newcastle striker Obafemi Martins from Rubin Kazan on a six-month loan deal, this was followed by Aston Villa capturing a World Cup star performer from the USA Michael Bradley from Borussia Monchengladbach to the end of the season. News that Andy Carroll had moved to Liverpool at this point came through but nothing could be confirmed and so the smaller deals continued with James Beattie and Stephen Ireland completing loan moves to Blackpool and Newcastle United respectively.

20:46 GMT saw the first of the expected big deals take place, Luis Suarez completed his move for a fee of £23million paving the way for Torres’ expected move. With just twenty minutes of the transfer window remaining Eidur Gudjonsen completed a loan move from Stoke to Fulham, and no more of the big transfers were confirmed with time quickly running out.

But five minutes before the transfer window closed the British transfer record was broken when Liverpool confirmed the signing of Andy Carroll, the young, misguided Newcastle striker with injury problems, for £36million. A fee more than that of Robinho, David Villa, Dimitar Berbatov, Thierry Henry and Andriy Arshavin, and was that high for the reason that the kid was British, which shows a decent England player is more valuable than a world-class foreign player, because they are so few and far between.

After the transfer window had closed however this new transfer record was smashed when Chelsea paid Liverpool £50million for Fernando Torres, they also confirmed the £21million signing of David Luiz from Benfica.

Two notable players who did not move during this transfer window and were fully expected to were, Charlie Adam, whom Blackpool had stated they would not sell for any price, holding off bids throughout the day from Liverpool and a late attempted bid from Tottenham. Also young and very highly rated Southampton midfielder Alex Oxlade-Chamberlain who was expected to transfer to a top four club, most likely Arsenal, but nothing came of it throughout the day.

So a day of record spending and big movers but was Andy Carroll really worth £36million, the 22 year-old spent five years at Newcastle playing 80 games and scoring 31 goals however to give him credit 11 of those goals have come during this seasons Premier League campaign.