The Daily Bee: The January Transfer Window Closes

Good Morning Fear the Wall

The January transfer window closed last night, after a much more active window than we’ve seen in recent years. There was lots of business, particularly in the Premier League, where there was plenty of activity, but also quite a few big moves too.

The weirdest business was done by Everton (as is becoming increasingly typical). They picked up Frank Lampard as their new manager, and both Dele Alli and Donny van de Beek, to bolster whatever weirdness Lampard is planning. While Aston Villa went about their business in what looks like a more coherent strategy, picking up Philippe Coutinho, Lucas Digne, and Calum Chambers.

Liverpool started a bit of a rebuild, with their incredible front-three starting to look a little old. They’ve had tons of success with Diogo Jota, and now they’ve added Colombian forward Luis Diaz. They also saw their move for Fulham youngster, Fabio Carvalho, collapse at the last minute, as they ran out of time to complete the move. It looks like Carvalho will stay at Fulham until the summer, and the transfer will be completed in the next transfer window instead.

Elsewhere, former Borussia Dortmund striker, Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang, completed a move to Barcelona, which is sure to be very normal, Spurs signed Dejan Kulusevski and Rodrigo Bentancur, and Christan Eriksen completed a move to Brentford. And of course, Newcastle splashed the cash, signing Kieran Trippier, Chris Wood, Bruno Guimaraes, Matt Targett, and Dan Burn.

The January transfer window has been a bit anticlimactic in recent seasons, but this year it did not disappoint at all. Unless you were expecting anything from BVB...

A Quiet Window for Borussia Dortmund

There was very little activity for BVB during the transfer window. The biggest moves were probably Ansgar Knauff heading out on loan to Frankfurt, and Tobi Raschl completing a permanent move to Greuther Furth.

There was some speculation that some more exciting moves might develop during the January window, but nothing ever transpired. BVB target, Denis Zakaria, completed a move to Juventus for an upsettingly low fee, and after much teasing Roman Burki is still a BVB player.

We don’t really know what happened, but at various points during the window he was reportedly close to joining Galatasaray and Lorient, before eventually backing out of either move.

Look, I’m sure there’s going to be lots of negative comments about Roman Burki still being a BVB player right now, but I don’t think this is on him. He’s looking after himself, as well he should, and the only people to blame for this situation are the club who offered him this lucrative deal to rest easy on the bench. Best of luck to Burki. I don’t have any issue with a player taking care of themselves.

The Daily Buzz

What do you think the best move of the transfer window was? And what was the weirdest?