I don’t know about you but I for one am glad that it’s all over, no I don’t mean West Ham’s season but the transfer window after a summer of will he, won’t he and Wenger out the transfer window has finally slammed shut and with that I don’t have to hear the phrase ‘Sky sources understand’ until at least January 2018.
As per usual deadline day promised so much but once again did not live up to the hype, then again the amount of hyperbole that Jim White spouts it never really had a chance of matching the expectations set by football fans up and down the country.
After a summer of protracted transfer saga’s, it is quite ironic that for all the big names that were meant to be leaving their respective clubs none of them actually did. Alexis Sanchez stayed put at Arsenal, Virgil van Dijk is stuck at Southampton, Riyad Mahrez could not get out of the shop window at Leicester while Philippe Coutinho was probably hoping he could still squeeze in through the Spanish transfer window that had been left ajar for an additional 24 hours.
So what do these four players not moving onto pastures new actually tell us then? Well for one it says that player power is arguably a thing of the past while it also says that top flight clubs now have so much money at their disposal that they can allow a prized asset to depreciate by sitting in the stands.
Or in Chelsea’s case depreciate by getting fat on the Copacabana Beach. For all the fuss that was made about Diego Costa and the fact that he was dumped by text (whether this was via a WhatsApp message I can neither confirm nor deny), it seems as if he is the forgotten man of this particular transfer window.
While Costa has decided to take a very extended holiday in his homeland – you know his proper homeland before he all of a sudden found a Spanish passport in time for the 2014 World Cup which ironically was held in his proper homeland. Chelsea have all but given up hope of selling the forward and now have the difficult task of getting the bloated mess to swap the Copacabana beach for their Cobham training ground. I have a feeling the former Atletico forward will not be returning any texts anytime soon.
Elsewhere in the transfer market Kylian Mbappe became the most expensive teenager in history after his move to PSG. He is reportedly getting a cool £350,000 a week for his efforts in the French capital after signing for Qatari Globetrotters on Thursday. When most 18-year-olds are working at Wetherspoons’ the now former Monaco striker is opening his account for the French national side, nice work if you can get it (The football not the bar job)
Also, Alex Oxlade-Chamberlain somewhat surprisingly signed for Liverpool for £40m, surprisingly because it was long since rumoured that he would be making a cross city move and joining up with defending champions Chelsea but even more surprising because he actually played for Liverpool just days before the move.
Yes Arsenal, don’t think I’ve forgotten about you. Just because there was a lack of transfer activity in the final few days of the window does not mean that your efforts last Sunday will not be mentioned. From an Arsenal fans point of view, the performance was shocking, for everyone else it was the perfect end of the summer.
Arsene Wenger’s ability to stick with a formation even when the players do not fit the shape could not have been more apparent last weekend with Hector Bellerin lost at sea at left wing back while ‘The Ox’ was loaned back to Arsenal for one last game under the terms of his new contract and produced the kind of performance that would seem embarrassing in a testimonial.
No one came out of that performance with any credit if you were connected to Arsenal which is a shame really because it takes the focus off of what was a scintillating performance by Jurgen Klopp’s men. Then again the amount of gloating that Tottenham fans have dished out over the past week can only be described as schadenfreude in its purest form and I think Arsenal have them in their first Europa League fixture after the international break.
Until next week