January transfer window winners: mainly Man City, Sandro Tonali, Daniel Levy, February | OneFootball

It’s hard to win the summer transfer window, and very often proves to be a bad idea in the end.

Even harder to win the January window, but these lads gave it the best go. Let’s all sit back and see which bit of this looks most ridiculous by May.

February

Yet again the unloved second month of the year, the runt of the litter with its meagre 28 days and just sh*tbone awful weather all the way through, has stolen January’s thunder by nicking deadline day.

Sure, it was the worst deadline day in the increasingly miserable history of January transfer window deadline days, but still, what a coup.

Great to see it’s still possible for the little guys to land a blow on the bigger beasts where transfer windows are concerned.

Marc Guehi

Just how much of a winner remains to be seen, because if these really are the last days of the Guardiola Era there is a degree of uncertainty hanging over Manchester City the like of which we haven’t seen for a decade.

But let’s be real; chances are, they’ll probably be fine. And, more importantly, probably better than Liverpool, who Guehi came so close to joining in the final hours of the summer transfer window, and definitely better than Crystal Palace, who are currently suffering a sustained round of the kind of punishment beatings that all little clubs who get too big for their boots must suffer.

He’s got a big move to a big club, and looks set to get plenty of games given City’s current issues at centre-back.

Antoine Semenyo

In truth, there was never a real chance of Guehi becoming a bit-part player at City. He’s simply too good a player in a position where they are not over-stocked. It’s why they signed him.

Semenyo swapping the guaranteed games and goals and fun of Bournemouth – an altogether less moribund club than Palace in general at this time – looked a riskier leap for the player.

Not a bit of it. He has carried on seamlessly at City. A man who was scoring his 10th Premier League goal of the season for Bournemouth against Spurs in the first week of January was scoring his second Premier League goal of the season for Manchester City against Spurs in the first week of February.

Five games into his City career and he already has four goals across three competitions, and next month he will, we assume, get the chance to test himself in the Champions League.

We’re sure he’d have loved to have been playing for Ghana at AFCON, but it’s also hard to escape the thought that their shock failure to qualify has worked out wonderfully well for Semenyo’s own career given how he spent December and January instead.

Man City

A second consecutive January of significant moves from City, who may be a cheat-code of a club in general but still know their way around the vagaries of the winter window better than most.

Last season’s crop has, in fairness, turned out to be something of a mixed bag but this time City have gone up a notch. It remains only fair to point out that it just simply isn’t an option necessarily available to most clubs, but making significant improvements to your starting XI – never mind squad – by making two Premier League-proven and Premier League-hardened January moves is just not the normal run of things.

The admittedly very early evidence suggests both Guehi and Semenyo have a hugely significant role to play over both the short and long-term for their new club, and that really is the January dream.

Newcastle

In a January window that had so few genuine winners, Newcastle are clearly in that camp just for being able to tell Luke Edwards that the stories linking Sandro Tonali to Arsenal were ‘stupid’ and ‘complete nonsense’. More clubs should just come out and call things stupid.

The mysterious Sandro Tonali agent

But the real hero of that story is still the agent who apparently offered Tonali to Arsenal. Because while he may indeed be an agent, it’s less clear whether or not he’s actually Sandro Tonali’s agent. Which should be important, but isn’t.

Because it’s job done, isn’t it? The jungle drums are beating, the idea is out there, and Sandro Tonali will leave Newcastle in the summer as their fans mutter darkly about the “Sky Six” which all sounds very serious and nefarious until you remember that, technically, if you think the “Sky Six” are doing anything to scupper your glorious ambition you then you are by definition admitting to being rattled by Tottenham F*cking Hotspur and have thus played and clowned yourselves.

Still, it is annoying to know on the second day of February that your summer is once going to be full of noise about your best players leaving rather than good players possibly arriving.

Raheem Sterling

We imagine the feeling of strutting around the post-window landscape as a still-available free agent must be enormously satisfying for the ol’ ego. As long as you don’t dwell too long on how and/or why you’re a still-available free agent after the window.

Still, though. Sure to have options. We wouldn’t put it past any of the London clubs currently embroiled in any level of relegation unpleasantness, frankly.

Cristian Romero

Say what you like about Tottenham’s captain, he knows how to time an Instagram post. Publishing his ‘well done to the lads’ post on Sunday’s game against Man City and calling the lack of available players ‘disgraceful’ moments after the window closed is elite playing of the game.

Fabio Paratici

Got an extra month’s salary from Spurs to stay on to the end of the January transfer window before being allowed to formally leave for Fiorentina. The already agreed transfers of Conor Gallagher and Souza duly went through, but Spurs made no more first-team signings after the announcement of Paratici’s post-January return to Italy.

Fiorentina made five signings in the January window, including Manor Solomon on loan from Spurs after his season-long loan at Villarreal was cut short.

Ever feel like you’ve been played?

Daniel Levy