Five knee-jerk claims for January signings who have already improved Premier League sides
It was a less than amazing January transfer window, let’s be honest, but based entirely on what we’ve seen from them in the, oooh, two or three weeks they’ve been at their new clubs – and absolutely nothing else – this quintet could prove to be important signings.
5) Alex Palmer (Ipswich)
No Premier League player has made more errors leading to goals this season than Ipswich’s Arijanet Muric. The goalkeeper losing his place to Christian Walton was thus inevitable; unfortunately for the Tractor Boys, a groin strain looks set to keep the promoted back-up out for the next few weeks.
Kieran McKenna will be hugely grateful that occurred in good time for them to sort out a replacement in the transfer market then, and even more thankful that West Brom’s Alex Palmer got off to such a flyer against Aston Villa.
Palmer’s place is now surely his to lose, with Muric continuing on the bench and Walton fine-but-not-spectacular before his injury. The relegation fight remains close enough that that little bit of last-minute business for a reported £2m could end up being massive for Ipswich.
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4) Marshall Munetsi (Wolves)
Relegation rivals Wolves were busy in the January transfer window too, mind, and Marshall Munesti made a positive impression his Premier League debut against Liverpool upon being sent on at the break.
Billed as a defensive midfielder on his arrival from Reims, the Zimbabwean international actually played an extremely box-to-box role at Anfield and helped shift the momentum in the visitors’ favour as they made the league leaders look decidedly nervous. It took a big save from Alisson to deny Munetsi a swift debut goal, and he kept getting into dangerous positions in the box.
A look at Munetsi’s stats suggest that should not have been surprising: he ranks in the top 10% of Big Five League midfielders for touches in the opposition box and the top 3% of non-penalty xG per game, with FBRef picking out Tomas Soucek and Mikel Merino among the players closest to his skillset. Could a goalscoring midfielder crashing the penalty box be just the difference Wolves need to stay up?
3) Romain Esse (Crystal Palace)
He’s played seven Premier League minutes and scored one goal since arriving from Millwall. Assuming the 19-year-old goes on to play 200 top-flight games averaging 70 minutes each over his career, that strike rate would see Esse finish his career with a record-breaking 2,001 Premier League goals.
If he lives up to that potential – and we see absolutely no reason whatsoever why he can’t – getting the youngster from Millwall really is a phenomenal bit of business for Palace. And god bless Oliver Glasner for keeping him benched over the past two games, thus keeping the stat alive.
2) Carlos Alcaraz (Everton)
The proud owner of the oddest career path of any youngster in world football today – Racing Club > Southampton > Juventus (loan) > Flamengo > Everton (loan) – it has taken Alcaraz just one start to become only the fifth Everton player to claim both a goal and an assist. Not in the same game, mind you, just cumulatively for the whole season.
They did come in the same game for Alcaraz, mind: Saturday’s 2-1 win against Crystal Palace, where Everton spent a lot of the game on the back foot but ended up winning anyway because Alcaraz made sure they had the quality to make it count when they needed it to. And when was the last time Everton were able to say that?
1) Omar Marmoush (Manchester City)
A strong contender for the most fun name to say out loud in the Premier League, the Bundesliga hotshot has helped Manchester City look more like themselves, as long as we conveniently completely ignore their losing 5-1 to Arsenal in the second of his three league games to date.
Marmoush’s hat-trick against Newcastle may have been pretty simple, but as we have noted elsewhere, City just had not shared the goals around enough this season, very much to their detriment. Refreshing that pool of scorers besides Erling Haaland has already been helpful for City to start turning things around after a wretched first half of the season.
While that’s going to be too little too late for them to do much of anything this season, Marmoush could prove to be a significant cornerstone in that rebuild it so rapidly became apparent they needed to oversee.
