Monday night's closure of the transfer window
brought an end to a record-breaking summer of hype,
hesitation, hope and heartbreak.
Now that the fun is over, football fans all over the
country are like mis-matched partners on awkward blind
dates, asking each other "what are we going to talk
about now?"
But just before we put this window to bed and start
willing the January sales to arrive, let's reflect on some
of the lessons that have been learned from the
summer's comings and goings in the Premier League.

1)Do your business early
Chastened by the loss of their title to Manchester United,
Manchester City began overhauling their squad almost as
soon as the season had ended, snapping up
Fernandinho, Jesus Navas, Stevan Jovetic and Alvaro
Negredo for almost £90m by mid-July.
Meanwhile, Manchester United boss David Moyes and his
Arsenal counterpart Arsene Wenger resembled stressed-
out husbands on Christmas Eve as they shopped around
at the last minute and did not make their first significant
purchase until the final hour of the window.

2)Don't change your manager and chief executive at
the same time
United's botched transfer policy, which saw high-profile
moves for Spain-based trio Cesc Fabregas, Thiago
Alcantara and Ander Herrera break down, before
Marouane Fellaini joined in the final half hour of the
window, has thrown the spotlight on the relationship
between new chief executive Ed Woodward and manager
David Moyes.
Their predecessors David Gill and Sir Alex Ferguson were
always going to be difficult acts to follow at Old Trafford,
but did the club err by allowing both to depart in quick
succession?

3)North East soap opera still delivers
When Joe Kinnear was appointed as Newcastle's director
of football in June, he not only claimed to have "more
intelligence" than the club's fans, he also boasted that
he could "open the door to any football manager in the
world". But Kinnear's quest to strengthen a squad that
only avoided relegation by five points last season has
resulted in very little, with Loic Remy's loan signing from
QPR their only noteworthy acquisition.
Meanwhile, down the road at Sunderland, a chaotic
summer has seen no fewer than 14 new faces brought in
and 15 shipped out by boss Paolo Di Canio. In theory,
the Italian now has the squad he wants, but after no
wins in three games he is under pressure to prove there
is method in his madness.

4)You can sell your best player and still keep fans
happy
If you were making a movie of the transfer window, then
Daniel Levy would have few rivals for the leading role.
The Tottenham chairman pulled off a masterstroke in
appointing Franco Baldini as his director of football, and
with the help of the Italian's contacts, has attracted
some of the brightest talents available to a club that is
not even competing in the Champions League.
Only when he had strengthened his squad in all areas
did Levy allow Gareth Bale to depart to Real Madrid for a
fee that ensured Spurs ended the window in credit.

5)Player power isn't everything
Bale may have eventually realised his dream of a move to
Real Madrid, but this was the window that taught us that
players do not always get what they want. Manchester
United striker Wayne Rooney and Liverpool's Luis Suarez
both agitated for a move, but when their clubs flatly
refused to sanction a transfer to a rival from the same
league, both were forced to stay.

6)Premier League struggles to attract the best
Although the Premier League's overall spend of £630m
nearly doubled that of any other European league, there
was plenty of evidence that the world's top players are
increasingly looking to ply their trade elsewhere.
The billionaire takeovers at French clubs Monaco and
Paris St-Germain persuaded star strikers Radamel Falcao
and Edinson Cavani to choose Ligue 1 over the Premier
League, while the enduring allure of Real Madrid and
Barcelona drew Bale and Neymar to Spain.
Overall, three of the 10 biggest deals across Europe
involved players moving to clubs in England, and only
one of the top eight.

7)English players - overpriced and overlooked
Scrolling down the endless list of Premier League ins and
outs this summer, one striking factor is the scarcity of
deals involving English players. Of last year's top seven
clubs, Chelsea were the only team to pay a transfer fee
for an English player, and that was the £209,000 they
handed West Brom for 16-year-old Isaiah Brown.
Andy Carroll, who cost West Ham £15.5m from Liverpool,
was the only Englishman to command a fee of more than
£8m.
Long considered to be overpriced, English players are
being increasingly overlooked.

Give teams money, they will spend it
Flush with the cash from their £3bn TV deal, Premier
League teams have been spending like never before. A
staggering 10 of the 20 clubs - including all three
promoted sides - broke their transfer record this
summer, with Norwich, Southampton and Cardiff all
splashing out more than £25m on new recruits.

9)If you want a player on loan, go to Chelsea
Just when you thought he was mellowing, Chelsea owner
Roman Abramovich provided a reminder of his ruthless
streak by hijacking Tottenham's deal for Anzhi
Makhachkala midfielder Willian with an 11th-hour £30m
deal.
The Russian, however, has been making a concerted
effort to trim the club's wage bill by farming out no
fewer than 23 players on loan this summer.

10)Nobody does a transfer quite like Real Madrid
Real Madrid underlined their status as the richest club
on the planet by breaking the world transfer record for
the fifth time in a row to make Bale their latest
"galactico".
The summer-long deal to capture Bale may have moved
along at the pace of a Terrence Malick film at times, but
it ended with fanfare straight from Hollywood as more
than 20,000 supporters turned up at the Bernabeu to
greet their new idol as he was unveiled on a giant stage
before performing tricks out on the field.
credit: BBC Sport

in depth analysis of the transfer window with a touch of humour

cahnellven: in depth analysis of the transfer window with a touch of humour

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