1) FFP is having an effect
Paris Saint-Germain may have produced one of the most eye-catching signings of the window — David Luiz, for £50 million — but like Manchester City, theirs has been a relatively quiet summer, thanks in no small part to the restrictions placed on their activity by Uefa. The Barclays Premier League might have spent more money than ever before, but here, too, the effects are clear: teams such as Liverpool, Chelsea and Southampton spent big, but sold big first. Most clubs only increased their spending in line with the extra money they had earned from increased television rights, and the two exceptions — Manchester United and Arsenal — have the commercial clout to justify their expenditure. On the Continent, both Madrid clubs balanced their investment with sales, while Barcelona were buying in bulk before their embargo takes effect.
2) There are two worlds in football, ever farther apart
Perhaps the most damning statistic produced by Fifa’s transfer matching system — the database that makes all deals official — is that the ten clubs with the greatest expenditure in Europe’s five biggest leagues this summer accounted for more than half the total spent over the past two months. It was most pronounced in Spain, where the two Madrid clubs and Barcelona paid out more than £300 million of the £425 million spent in that country. The next best were Valencia, who spent £5 million. It is not just limited to clubs: the big five leagues accounted for 85 per cent — more than £1.8 billion — of all the money spent in Europe. There are two separate worlds. More must be done to bring them together.
3) What is the point of deadline day?
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What is the point in having a transfer window if clubs are going to miss deadlines and still have moves ratified? It transpired that the Premier League had ratified Tom Cleverley’s loan move to Aston Villa from Manchester United yesterday, despite the paperwork being filed about half an hour after an extended transfer deadline had passed. The Premier League had granted a two-hour extension for United and Villa to complete the deal, but the documentation was not submitted until about 1.30am yesterday, 30 minutes after the new deadline. Conversely, in Scotland, Celtic were confident they had lodged all the relevant paperwork relating to a proposed season-long loan for John Guidetti, the Manchester City striker, with the Scottish FA and Fifa shortly before an extended midnight deadline, only for the transfer to be rejected after the documentation did not filter through the system until seconds after the deadline passed. Celtic have since appealed to Fifa and hope to discover in the coming days if the decision will be reversed.
The difference is that Cleverley’s move was a domestic transfer and Guidetti’s switch classed as an international transfer, but why should there be one rule for one and one rule for another? Either have a deadline or abandon it altogether.
4) The loan system is broken
Most fans associate loans with emergency signings to provide cover for injuries, experience for young players or numbers for teams low on resources. Partly inspired by Financial Fair Play, though, that has all changed, and the time is fast approaching when the system needs to be looked at. No club are acting outside the rules, but increasingly they are not behaving in the spirit of them.
Chelsea, for example, have some 26 players on loan across Europe. Very few of these will ever stand a chance of making the first team: instead, the model is to buy them cheap, build them up and sell them on. They are not the only club attempting to follow this model, but they are by some distance the best at it. This is contrary to the interests of competitive balance — stockpiling players from a young age means smaller clubs cannot keep hold of them and profit first from their skills and then their sales — and can hamper players’ development.
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Others, such as Monaco in the case of Falcao are loaning players out to get their wages off the books as they try to meet FFP. This is not what the system was intended to do.
Chelsea have 26 players on loan to clubs in eight different countries
England: C Atsu (Everton), P Bamford (Middlesbrough), R Bertrand (Southampton), N Chalobah (Burnley), V Moses (Stoke City), K Omeruo (Middlesbrough), J Swift (Rotherham ), J Blackman (Middlesbrough)
Spain: G Kakuta (Rayo Vallecano), M Pasalic (Elche), U Davila (Tenerife)
Netherlands: J McEachran (Vitesse Arnhem), Wallace (Vitesse Arnhem), B Traoré (Vitesse Arnhem), S Perica (Breda)
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Germany: T Hazard (Borussia Mönchengladbach), T Kalas (Cologne), O Romeu (Stuttgart), L Piazon (Eintracht Frankfurt)
Italy: M Marin (Fiorentina), F Torres and M van Ginkel (both AC Milan); France: J Rodríguez (Bastia), M Delac (Arles-Avignon);
Greece: I Feruz (OFI Crete);
Chile: C Cuévas (Universidad de Chile)