Last week we brought you the winners (Sol Campbell, West Ham etc) and this week we bring you those for whom January was a nightmare - the fans, managers and players who suffered...
10) Jason Scotland
To be fair, you can have no complaints when you fail to score in 20 Premier League games, but when the manager brings in not one but two strikers on deadline day you have to get the feeling that your number is up. And true enough, Scotland was on the bench at Sunderland on Saturday but watched first Marcelo Moreno and then Victor Moses climb off the bench while he was stuck alongside perpetual sub Scott Sinclair. January has not gone well for Mr Scotland.
9) Birmingham fans
The talk was of £40m being spent in the January transfer window, and then £20m and then just £10m. In the end they spent £6m on Michel and Craig Gardner and did not add the attacking player they were chasing with moves for Roman Pavlyuchenko, Kenwyne Jones and Ryan Babel. Any disappointment will be tempered by the Blues' unexpected safety with more than a third of a season to play, and the acknowledgement that the money will still be there to spend in the summer, but Birmingham fans who dream of overhauling Aston Villa would have liked to see a few headline-grabbing big-name arrivals.
8) Thomas Sorensen
Clubs like Stoke do not spend £3.25m on a keeper to let him sit on the bench and you hae to assume that Tony Pulis sees Asmir Begovic as his long-term number one, with Sorensen eventually being pushed out in the cold. But the most galling thing to Sorensen will be the links with a loan move to Arsenal. Although Arsene Wenger has since denied the approach, the Dane will obviously be left with thoughts of 'what might have been' whilst he's aiming long balls at Mamady Sidibe's head and wondering when Begovic will take his place.
7) Anderson
Fined for going AWOL, banished to the reserves, frozen out of United's last four games - things are not going very well for the Brazilian at Old Trafford, where he has earned himself the ire of Sir Alex Ferguson. The possibility of a move to France and regular football under a more regular manager was mooted in January but apparently fell through because of doubts about Owen Hargreaves' return to the club. So Anderson remains at United, where he remains about as popular as the man who designed that 'Welcome to Manchester' poster.
6) Sam Allardyce
Aruna Dindane was "in the building right the way up to five o'clock", according to Allardyce, who had already failed to agree a deal for Benjani because of work permit problems. So Benni McCarthy left and on Saturday, the Blackburn boss fielded an XI with only 13 goals between them this season at Stoke. They were lucky to get nil. After a month of being linked with the likes of James Beattie, Alardyce eventually came away from the transfer window with a weaker squad. Anyone believing his line that he's perfectly happy with the players he's got for the relegation run-in?
5) Michael Owen
The real nad news for Owen came on December 23 when Mame Biram Diouf was granted a work permit. The problem intensified on January 10 when Diouf came off the bench ahead of him and impressed, and then on January 16 Owen's status as fourth-choice Manchester United striker was sealed when Diouf scored his first goal for the club. Owen is now so surplus to requirements at Old Trafford that nobody would have been surprised if rumours of a deadline-day move to Aston Villa had turned out to be true. When half the United team are jetting off to SA this summer, Owen may well wish they were.
4) Mick McCarthy
"We have offered to pay over the odds on three or four players but it is just not going to happen. We have been prepared to do it and we have bid more than others, but they don't want to come or the clubs don't want to sell," said the Wolves boss, utterly desperate to add some quality to a side over-relying on Kevin Doyle. They bid a massive £5m for Stephen Hunt (he's good, but £5m?) while McCarthy admitted an ambitious move for Robbie Keane had failed to come off. Could there be anything more frustrating to a football manager than facing a relegation battle with money in the bank that you just can't spend?
3) Roman Pavlyuchenko
He wanted nothing more than to leave Tottenham while boss Harry Redknapp would probably have helped him pack his cossack hats, but both reckoned without Daniel Levy and his insistence on running his football club like a business (crazy talk, isn't it Hammers/Palace/Pompey fans?) and not accepting massive losses on valuable footballers just because they are only the fourth-choice striker. Levy wanted £13m for Pavlyuchenko and that kind of money was not being bandied around by anyone in January, particularly not the sensible Scot in charge of the purse strings at Birmingham. So the poor lad is stuck for now.
2) Avram Grant
Things weren't exactly looking sunny in the Pompey garden as the transfer window opened but they were within touching distance of survival thanks in part to the efforts of Younes Kaboul and Asmir Begovic. So of course the club sold Younes Kaboul and Asmir Begovic to raise enough money to pay the rest of the rotten squad that are now seven points offf 17th and surely doomed. Add in another change of ownership and the very public humiliation of visiting a 'massage parlour' and we suspect that 2010 has already become Grant's annus horriblis.
1) Arsenal fans
There's money available and big gaping holes in the squad to fill with said cash, as every Arsenal fan draws up a list of possible striker targets from the ridiculously optimistic (David Villa), through the interesting but unlikely (Ruud van Nistelrooy) to the possible (Roman Pavlyuchenko). There's also the small matter of a new goalkeeper, centre-half and central midfielder (all preferably over six foot) alongside assurances from everyone inside the Emirates that Arsene Wenger had been given money to spend. So what did they get? A 35-year-old centre-half whose only previous game of the season was against Morecambe in the fourth division. And he was rubbish.
Sarah Winterburn
Your Comments
kylevalentine
"good article sarah"
quirkishdelight
"memcme excellent (and totally true) point well made. kudos sir"
garzer
"It's a fair point about Pavlyuchenko, Kevin/Gandhi, it was just a report I read recently about Louis Saha that made me think about a lot of these squad players who hardly get a game. Apparently United saved £7 million in wages and one of Wayne Rooney's final add-ons was waived just by getting him off the books even though, officially, he was a free transfer.
Fair enough, he is looking good now but United would never have had the time and patience to nurture a player whose problems were mostly mental when they had Rooney, Berbatov, Tevez and Ronaldo up front. The point is, that by trying to squeeze a couple of extra million out of a club for a player who barely plays, it may actually cost them way more in the long run. Then again, I'm sure Levy factors this into the equation as he's hardly an idiot."
MeMcMe
"I've seen him play enough to think it's not good business. In Europe last season especially. I'm neutral, I don't really shout for anyone other than Bolton, so I'm not just picking on him, I'm just saying to compare £3.5 million for Gardner with £5 million for Hunt, I know who I'd choose. Hunt was outstanding for Reading when they were flying high in their first season up. I think he'd do a job for any team in the league. And although we'll never see it, I think his career would have panned out a lot differently if he was English. There is a great hyperbole that surrounds English players (see collective orgasms over Adam Johnson last night), and even managers seem to fall for it."
Gandhi
"Red_mountain: replace 'Arsenal fans' with 'liverpool fans' and 'fabregas' with 'Gerard/Torres' and your post works equally as well.
McMeMe: and how much have you actually seen Craig Gardner play?? From what ive seen of him 3.5m seems pretty fair to me. Im Irish and even i think 5m for Hunt might just be stetching it a bit. He's good but is never going to be above regulation fighting standard. Is 5m really good business if your going to struggle anyway and 1 of your main rivals now has an extra 5m in the bank.
Slimpickering: what the hell are you on about mate?
Garzer/Steve: fair enough Pav is prob just depreciating sitting on spurs bench and it might be worth it to get his wages off the books but you still have to offset that with the cost of bringing in a replacement. Ive never had any time for Levy but recently i must say im actually starting to have a lot of respect for him. Managers shouldn't be able spend big money on players and then offload them for half the costs when they feel like and expect the board to lump another big sum for a replacement. Levy is perfectly right to tell Redknapp you either sell him for full reimbursement or utilise him. It was his decision in the first place that valued him at 13m so if that hasnt worked out its the coaching and playing staffs fault not the board. Sometimes its good to have a complete opposite view coming from the board which Levy seems to offer "
kevinboatang
"Garzer, valid point. but the money Levy would want back would probably be made up of add-ons and sell-ons as opposed to a lump sum. It's that is usually the stumbling block. I think his main issue is that right now Spurs fans are looking at him and thinking 'Good player, will get a chance', Harry has said 'Good player, will a chance', then Pav comes out and says 'It's all sh't, I want to leave and go home, crycrycry, woe is me' and you think, what's the f''king point? Look at Bale and look at Pav, Bale proved to the manager he wanted it, Pav just expects."
MeMcMe
"Well, 5 years is just sliiiiiiiiightly overselling it when you bear in mind he's made 32 league starts in those 5 years. Let's see how he turns out before we judge, but I'm gonna stick with total waste of money.
And back on topic, if Craig Gardner is worth £3.5 million, how in the hell can Stephen Hunt be overpriced at less than twice that? Should probably watch people play before mentioning them in a list."
harryboulton
"Owens biggest downfall has bee that United have hit on a system that not only gets goals and results, but more importantly, gets the best out of pretty much all of their midfield and attacking players as well. Since the turn of the year SAF's switch from 4-4-2 to a 4-5-1/4-3-3 has seen Rooney, Nani, Fletcher, Scholes and Carrick all turn in fabulous performances. Not to mention steady contributions from Valencia, Giggs and Diouf."
steve_jonesuk
"By the way, can we have a separate thread for fans of the big 4 to bicker rather than having them clog up every comment thread ever on this site?"
steve_jonesuk
"While Mick McCarthy undoubtedly tried to bring in some good players, and tried hard, I suspect his idea of "over the odds" is different to that of managers who can keep a team in the Premiership. Maybe his third Premiership club will benefit from his Wolves adventure.
And while Pavlyuchenko may prove his worth now Keane's gone, if he doesn't it won't have been good business sense to turn down £6m when it's all you're going to get, nor to pay his massive wages just so he can come off the bench occasionally."
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