The January transfer window in 2024 promised so much, but has ultimately ended up delivering so little.
Today, on February 1, it's transfer deadline day - or as Fabrizio Romano likes to call it: Christmas. Yet the transfer guru is here reposting his own tweets about Matz Sels' bank-breaking £5.5m move to Nottingham Forest. No transfer window has been bleaker than this. Just ask those who've had to report on it.
No disrespect, but when the biggest move in the market is a Romanian defender joining Tottenham from Genoa, you know you're in trouble.
Where's Benzema's SENSATIONAL move to the Premier League? When will Kylian Mbappe finally put us all out of our misery and make up his bloody mind? Heck, even Ivan Toney has stayed put at Brentford, despite posturing for a move away in multiple interviews. It just doesn't make any sense.
Well, it does - the Premier League's profit and sustainability rules (PSRs) have instilled a fear in clubs for overstepping the financial limit by even the slightest of margins - but that's not the point.
Just 23 players have been signed by Premier League sides in the winter window (at the time of writing), compared to 62 in 2023. To make matters worse, eight clubs haven't signed anyone. Not even a poxy little loan deal. Nothing. Nada.
Another four sides have only brought someone in on a temporary basis - clubs really can't believe their seasons are going to magically turn around without addressing a problem area in the team, surely.
Drumming up enthusiasm in a month where transfers simply aren't happening has been a tedious exercise of painstaking boredom - not to mention the two FA Cup weekends and Premier League winter break further dampening spirits. Can anyone else hear that little violin?
What's more, just £85m overall has been spent. Now, the incessant desire for transfers and movement between clubs has become a sport unto itself in the past decade, with fans caring more about incomings and outgoings than what's actually happening on the pitch. But £80m? Chelsea spent that on two separate players alone last January.
If neutrals were to rely on anyone livening up the transfer window, it would've been Todd Boehly. And yet, the Chelsea owner seems to have learned his lesson and kept his chequebook in the drawer for another six months. How boring.
But it's not that there haven't been any interesting rumours, either. Arsenal looked at signing Marc Cucurella from Chelsea at one stage, while the Blues were linked with Callum Wilson to bolster their attacking options. Both deals were interesting, because no one knew the thinking behind them or how things would've played out.
Instead, we're all left thinking about what might've been - especially those of us having to cover it day-after-day. Spare a thought for us, if you'd be so kind.
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Manchester City, though, are looking to bring in an elite defender, beating off competition from Los Blancos in the process.
Meanwhile, Manchester United are ina transfer battle with Liverpool for £51m-rated La Liga star.
