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Why deadline day was bound to disappoint

By on February 2, 2015

For those who stayed up until midnight GMT, with rapt attention to their television screens, may have suffered through deadline day disappointment this year. With Premier League spending at a four-year low there were hardly any major transfers to watch come in, while Sky Sports also ended their tradition of posting journalists at club grounds to be the victim of rowdy and occasionally very funny crowds, further spoiling the party.

In fact, aside from Juan Cuadrado’s £23.3 million move to Chelsea with Andre Schurrle leaving Stamford Bridge for VfL Wolsburg for almost as much (and even those moves had been rumored for days), few other deals went in and out of the Premier League at all. Darren Fletcher left Manchester United for West Bromwich Albion on a free, and Wilfried Zaha returned to Crystal Palace after a disappointing stint at Old Trafford for a fee thought to be around £3m, while Aaron Lennon, Filip Djuricic, and Robert Huth both sealed loan moves. On the whole, however, it was a very disappointing night.

At least relative to the high expectations the media are engendering. Making a bonanza of deadline day may be fun in theory, or at least it is in Italy, where they uphold long-standing tradition of communing club officials at a hotel in Milan for a literal market where players can be bought and sold on deadline day. But the party is destined to disappoint when the deals don’t materialize,

Amid all the media hype, it is easy to forget that this isn’t a long-standing English tradition. The occasion only came into existence in the 2002/2003 season with a change in the European transfer system and was actually detested in England at the time.

Naturally, a hard deadline for transfers can cause stress and panic buying. Many deadline day deals end this way; in 2012, when more than £135m was spent on deadline day deals, Newcastle United’s Andy Carroll was sold to Liverpool for a record of £35m for an Englishman and Fernando Torres bought by Chelsea for £50m. It isn’t a surprise that both turned out to be major flops.

It can be said, however, that on the same day Chelsea signed David Luiz for a price reported to be in the region of £20m, while Liverpool also signed Luis Suarez in the same price range. Both have now gone on to be sold for hefty profits though both had also been in the works (or at least the press) for longer. Much like the Cuadrado move today, they do represent the one fashion in which deadline day can be efficient for clubs – in the regards of actually wrapping up deals.

For the most part, however, deadline day often hurts buyers, which in part is why big money deals often do happen. At its height in the summer of 2008, multiple moves, including Robinho to Manchester City as well as moves for Marouane Fellaini, Vedran Corluka, and Dimitar Berbatov all completed very late on. Yet this happened in the summer, when deals generally tend to be bigger and more frequent. Just the past summer 2014 deadline day, Daley Blind, Radamel Falcao, Javier Hernandez, and Danny Welbeck all completed moves.

So to be more efficient, it is clear that clubs have begun to avoid deadline day as much as possible. While the money in the game continues to multiply – 2014/2015 was still another record year for spending as Premier League club’s splashed nearly a billion pounds on transfers – deadline day spending dwindles. Especially in the smaller January transfer window where clubs also look to complete early moves considering the season is underway, deadline day spending is leveling out. This year, deadline day spending in England has reached one of its lowest points in years – expected to be just under £30m. The picturesque ideal of a deadline day bonanza cannot be, simply due to logistics of transfers and the time and care usually taken in them.

About Alex Morgan

Alex Morgan, founder of Football Every Day, lives and breaths football from the West Coast of the United States in California. Aside from founding Football Every Day in January of 2013, Alex has also launched his own journalism career and hopes to help others do the same with FBED. He covers the San Jose Earthquakes as a beat reporter for QuakesTalk.com and his work has also been featured in the BBC's Match of the Day Magazine.