Summer Transfer Window – 2 weeks to go

This summer, the transfer market has moved into a new gear.  The issue is price and value.  

In recent years, Kevin Thelwell managed to assemble for Everton a squad comprised of players on frees, loans and sub-£20M signings.  In the competitive environment of the Premier League – where even a newly promoted club can have a net spend up to around £150M – that is a much greater challenge.  

A quick article to put the vital next 2 weeks into some context.  This may mean paying up — or giving up, and padding out the squad with lesser players or temporary loans.

Loans

Currently, there are only 4 loans into Premier League clubs: Grealish (Everton), Palhinha (Spurs), Guiu (Sunderland) and Ramsdale (Newcastle).  

This market should hot up in the next couple of weeks as clubs who prefer to sell give up and release players on loan.  There are going to be some excellent options – especially from the overloaded Rich 6 and Champions League squads around Europe.  We may yet get Richarlison and Rensch…

Free transfers

There have been relatively few free transfers into Premier League clubs of any note.  The big ones are Calvert-Lewin (Leeds), Walker-Peters (West Ham), Wilson (West Ham) and Boscagli (Brighton).

As to what is left, it looks like slimmer pickings than in recent years. Maybe Tomiyasu, if he is over his injury.  Maybe Jay DaSilva or Josh Brownhill to pad out the midfield a bit.  Lucas Vasquez, formerly of Real Madrid, is available as a versatile option down the right flank.

Sub-£20M

Until recently, this was the category in which clubs were finding good value – by shopping in cheaper markets etc.  However, more and more clubs have been getting in on the act and this has had an impact on prices.  It is harder than ever to find a ready-made first-team player for less than £20M.

The promoted clubs have hunted in the market for value and maybe found a few decent options in Stach (Leeds), Bijol (Leeds), Gudmundsson (Leeds) and Xhaka (Sunderland).  Otherwise, maybe only Alcaraz (Everton), Wolfe (Wolves), Mosquera (Arsenal), DeCuyper (Brighton), Truffert (Brentford), Kayode (Brentford) and Kellerher (Brentford) fall into that category. 

There's a bit of value left in this category but most signings look more like development players.

£20M to £30M

In this category, the ones who've moved so far are Broja (Burnley), Guessand (Aston Villa), Ugochukwu (Burnley), Dewsbury-Hall (Eveton), Barry (Everton), Milambo (Brentford), Strand-Larsen (Wolves), Lopez (Wolves), Petrovic (Bournemouth), Adringra (Sunderland), Lo Fee (Sunderland), Diarra (Sunderland).

This is essentially the market price for clubs outside of the Rich 8 (including promoted clubs) to buy a decent quality first-team player who could improve their First XI.  There’s some pretty run-of-the-mill players in this category too – and I think it makes our business with Dewsbury-Hall and Barry look extremely good value.

£30M to £40M

In this category, those moving so far are Diakhite (Bournemouth), Thiaw (Newcastle), Ndoye (Forest), Todibo (West Ham), Tel (Spurs) and Kostoulas (Brighton).

These are all decent players with good experience in a Top 5 league (except 18-year-old Kostoulas from Greece).  In most cases, it is hard to distinguish some of these from the quality found in the previous category, to be honest.  These look more like Europa League quality players than Champions League quality players (with the exception of Tel).

To reinforce this, it is interesting that Bournemouth recently managed to find Champions League quality players in Kerkez, Zabarnyi and Huijsen for under £20M but have had to pay right at the top end of this category for Diakhite (who doesn’t look as good as the players he will be replacing). Just shows how tough the market is.

£40M to £50M

Given our recent and sustained period of extreme austerity, this sounds like a big fee.  Sadly, it’s not really.  By quirk, I think there’s only one incoming player to a Premier League club in this category so far. That is Jorel Hato (Chelsea) who will probably cover at left-back or centre-back.

Basically, this looks to be the place to find players with genuine Champions League quality but who haven’t reached their potential yet.  You can definitely still find that quality in the lower price brackets but it is certainly much harder.

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I think this puts the proposed fee for Tyler Dibling in perspective somewhat.

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