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Hello. Expecto Patronum! And the Premier League transfer window is shut.
On the way in today’s bonus TAFC:
🛒 Arsenal’s late Sterling swoop
🥷 Sancho sneaks Chelsea move
🤯 League One’s stunning deal
🤔 Are Barca still a big draw?
Sterling and Sancho change clubs just in time
Oh we of little faith. There was TAFC yesterday, fretting about the prospect of Raheem Sterling and Jadon Sancho getting stuck in the slammer, only for both men to bust out of their cells.
Deadline day is supposed to throw curveballs, and last night delivered in style. Sancho found an escape route from Manchester United, joining Chelsea so late that neither club’s admin was around to announce the transfer on X. And Sterling? Well, he hit the jackpot with an out-of-the-blue loan to Arsenal.
Heaven knows quite what Sancho is walking into at Stamford Bridge. As part of a cast of thousands, we wait to see if he thrives, but I suspect he’s on for a decent amount of game time. It’s an initial loan which Chelsea are obligated to make permanent at the end of the season, for something like £25m ($33m).
Football can be counter-intuitive. Chelsea, with buyer’s remorse over Sterling, take Sancho from Old Trafford, irrespective of the fact that United had buyer’s remorse over Sancho. Beauty is in the eye of the beholder. And in leaping into the thick of a title scrap, it can’t have hurt Sterling that he and Mikel Arteta had positive past history together at Manchester City.
Arteta, to my mind, possesses a keen eye for the market. Sterling is another attacking string to his bow — and, even better, Arsenal will pay less than 50 per cent of his salary during his loan. That said, while the 29-year-old is a threat and can operate centrally, he’s not a certified No 9 — and Arsenal would have been well served by finding one of those.
What else happened?
Those were the headline moves but here’s what else went down in the closing hours of the Premier League window:
Inside the biggest deals
With the dust starting to settle, I’ll run you through the best nuggets from our deep dives into the deals done by the big Premier League clubs:
One other important news line from yesterday too. Arsenal’s new signing Mikel Merino? He’s already out injured — a “huge blow”, according to Arteta. There’s always something…
📲 Live news blog
Ornstein: Deal of the transfer window
Odobert: Significant price but high ceiling
It’s been a strange window. Spending is down year-on-year significantly. Deals have been done in fits and starts. Even in this last week, it wasn’t as crazy as predicted.
The transfer I’d pick out would be Wilson Odobert from Burnley to Tottenham Hotspur. First, it came out of the blue. Everybody was on board at Tottenham’s end but very few people knew about it.
It was also contingent on Oliver Skipp leaving Spurs. When Leicester City stepped forward for the midfielder, that immediately allowed Tottenham to activate their plan on Odobert.
The reason I like this is because Odobert is very highly rated. People who know more than me think he has a really high ceiling.
He’s only 19, a France youth international and a technical, intellectual player. The price was significant (an initial £25m) but Tottenham feel that it will come to be seen as very good value — maybe even a bargain.
Why Join Barca?
“When you leave and spend one year away, you realise what you had.”
That was Ilkay Gundogan speaking after rejoining Manchester City. He might have been talking about City per se. Or he might have been hinting at the realities of life at Barcelona.
Barca are a contradiction. Their name alone makes players swoon but on the ground, they’re in financial disarray. Gundogan was there for a year before Barca took fright at his salary. When Dani Olmo joined from RB Leipzig recently, he did so knowing the empty coffers at Camp Nou would delay his registration for La Liga matches.
Athletic Bilbao’s Nico Williams had a different perspective. Barca tried to engage him but their economic state served to put him off. Consequently, The Athletic’s Pol Ballus is thinking what a lot of people are thinking — the more Barca fester, the weaker their position in negotiations becomes. How much longer will they be a destination of choice for the truly elite?
Around The Athletic FC
- Before long, Barcelona might not be the destination of choice for tourists either. The city is getting sick of them — but the football club do well out of foreigners buying tickets and visiting their museum. It’s a conundrum.
- Manchester United’s got their Europa League fixtures yesterday. Rangers at Old Trafford is a belter.
- I’d never heard of Machida Zelvia until Nick Miller wrote about them (Nick’s search for the obscure is as captivating as his beard). They’d never been in Japan’s top flight until this season but they have a big chance of winning it. Let it be so.
- Stand by to feel a warm glow — Liverpool’s recently departed manager, Jurgen Klopp, has been in Paris supporting Wojtek Czyz, a Paralympic badminton star who (and I had to read this back twice) lost his lower left leg to amputation after a collision in a football match.
Show Viz
I once saw Marcelo Bielsa’s Leeds United amass 36 efforts on goal over 90 minutes against Wigan Athletic. They lost 2-1.
Shouldn’t that be impossible? You’d think so, but the stats say otherwise. Time after time, you hear pundits categorise dominance, or the fairness of a result, using total shots. Our data analyst Mark Carey has news for them. Peppering the net is not enough in itself.
What matters is the quality of striking, rather than the quantity. Over the past six seasons, only 53 per cent of Premier League contests have been won by the side who totted up the most shots on goal. So next time you see a centre-back loitering with intent 30 yards out and you’re tempted to shout ‘shoot’, don’t.
Quiz Answer
Manchester versus Liverpool is tomorrow’s box office fixture. Yesterday, we asked you to name the 10 players who have only ever scored once in that fixture.
They were: James Milner, Jadon Sancho, Nicky Butt, Jesse Lingard, Steve Bruce, Kobbie Mainoo, John Barnes (incredibly), Adam Lallana, Wes Brown, Neil Ruddock.
Catch a match
(Selected games, if you missed yesterday’s TAFC)
Saturday – Premier League: Arsenal vs Brighton, 7.30am/12.30pm — USA Network, Fubo/ TNT Sports; West Ham vs Manchester City, 12.30pm/5.30pm — NBC, Fubo/Sky Sports; Serie A: Lazio v AC Milan, 2.45pm/7.45pm — Paramount+, Fubo/OneFootball; MLS: Chicago Fire v Inter Miami, 8.30pm/1.30am — Apple TV.
Sunday – Premier League: Newcastle vs Tottenham, 8.30am/1.30pm — USA Network, Fubo/Sky Sports; Manchester United vs Liverpool, 11am/4pm — Peacock Premium/Sky Sports; Serie A: Juventus vs Roma, 2.45pm/7.45pm — Paramount+/TNT Sports; La Liga: Real Madrid vs Real Betis, 3.30pm/8.30pm — ESPN+, Fubo/Premier Sports.
(Top photo: Stuart MacFarlane/Arsenal FC via Getty Images)