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Transfer deadline day: Premier League clubs net January profit

Last updated on .From the section Footballcomments68

Odion Ighalo, Robbie Brady, Manolo Gabbiadini and Mamadou Sakho
Odion Ighalo, Robbie Brady, Manolo Gabbiadini and Mamadou Sakho were among the deadline-day deals

Premier League clubs have recorded a transfer window profit for the first time - despite spending reaching a six-year January high of £215m.

Southampton and Burnley made late deadline-day deals, while Odion Ighalo moved from Watford to China for £20m.

Saints paid about £14m for Napoli's Manolo Gabbiadini, and the Clarets signed Robbie Brady for up to £13m

However, top-flight sides brought in £40m more than they paid out, according to finance analysts Deloitte.

Premier League teams have spent a record £1.38bn on transfers in the 2016-17 season, after a summer outlay of £1.165bn.

Spending in January 2017 is the second highest - behind the record mark of £225m six years ago - and dwarfs the £35m spent in the first January transfer window in 2003.

While the window is now closed for the major European leagues, there could still be departures as big-spending China has an official deadline of 28 February.

All figures based on transfers reported as at 00:30 GMT on 1 February

The main deadline-day deals

Deadline-day sales were led by Nigeria striker Ighalo, 27, moving to Chinese Super League club Changchun Yatai.

Burnley were one of the busier sides, recruiting 25-year-old Republic of Ireland international Brady from Norwich for a club-record fee having earlier snapped up another midfielder, Ashley Westwood, from Aston Villa.

Southampton bolstered their attacking options by bringing in Gabbiadini, 25, while Crystal Palace secured Liverpool centre-back Mamadou Sakho on loan and signed Serbia midfielder Luka Milivojevic from Greek side Olympiakos.

Swansea City signed Aston Villa forward Jordan Ayew in a swap deal that saw Wales defender Neil Taylor go the other way.

Several mooted moves did not go through on a relatively low-key day, with Celtic keeper Craig Gordon and striker Moussa Dembele staying with the Scottish champions despite reported interest from Chelsea.

Sunderland, thwarted in their attempts to sign forward Leonardo Ulloa from Premier League champions Leicester City, had a bid of about £12m rejected by Southampton for forward Jay Rodriguez.

Moussa Dembele on Twitter
Dembele tweeted a photo of Leonardo DiCaprio delivering the "I'm not leaving" speech from the Wolf of Wall Street film, with himself in a similar pose

Outside the Premier League

Championship clubs spent a record £40m on deadline day, led by Aston Villa signing forward Scott Hogan from Brentford for a fee that could reach £12m.

Wigan sold winger Yanic Wildschut to Norwich for £7m, but they ended the day with eight new players.

Sheffield Wednesday have to wait until Wednesday to see if their £9.5m move for Middlesbrough striker Jordan Rhodes had gone through in time.

Midfielder Ravel Morrison returned to QPR on a late loan deal from Italian side Lazio, and highly rated West Ham defender Reece Oxford, 18, moved to Reading on loan for the rest of the season.

Bristol city tweet
Bristol City teased their rivals Rovers, who are based four miles away

Striker Matty Taylor caused a stir by leaving Bristol Rovers, where he has scored 19 times this season, for local rivals Bristol City - the first time a player has done so since 1987.

Championship side City wasted no time in winding up their League One foes, with manager Lee Johnson saying: "It'll be a big step up in standard for him."

Meanwhile, Neil Danns' tour of the clubs of the north west beginning with a B saw him tick off Blackpool. The midfielder's loan deal from Bury follows spells at Bolton and Blackburn. He has also squeezed in Birmingham City and Bristol City along the way.

What were the major deals of the window?

Everton were the Premier League club to spend the most on a single player, paying Manchester United £22m for France midfielder Morgan Schneiderlin.

However, the biggest fee was the £60m paid to Chelsea by Chinese Super League side Shanghai SIPG for Brazil attacking midfielder Oscar.

Also departing the Premier League was Dimitri Payet - with West Ham accusing the France forward of lacking "commitment and respect" as he rejoined Marseille for £25m.

The top six sides did not shell out - the only new purchase among the leading sides being Arsenal's surprise signing of left-back Cohen Bramall from non-league Hednesford Town for £40,000. He had just been made redundant from his job in a car factory before a trial with the Gunners.

Key January transfer window findings

  • Premier League clubs spent £215m to buy new players in the January window, recording a net transfer profit of £40m compared with a net spend of £100m last year.
  • The bottom six clubs accounted for half of total expenditure, with sides in the bottom half of the table spending £145m (67% of total expenditure).
  • Deadline-day spending by top-flight clubs totalled £60m, up £20m on last year, and the second-highest ever after £135m in 2011.
  • Championship sides spent a total of £80m, a big increase on last year's total of £35m and a new record for a January transfer window for the division. The £40m spent on deadline day was the same amount spent by Premier League clubs on deadline day in January 2016.
  • The Premier League was once again the highest-spending league in European football. The next highest was France's Ligue 1, with total transfer expenditure of about £130m.

"The sales of Oscar, Dimitri Payet, Odion Ighalo and Memphis Depay, as well as around £20m worth of sales to Championship clubs, have helped Premier League clubs record net receipts for the first time in a transfer window," said Deloitte spokesman Dan Jones.

"As was the case last year, it is clubs in the bottom half of the table who have driven expenditure this January, investing in their squads in an attempt to secure survival."

Round-up from Europe

Andy Brassell, European football expert

Germany doesn't really get the last-minute English spirit of deadline day, with the Bundesliga wrapping things up at the civilised hour of 6pm local time as usual. Bayern Munich made a pair of big signings in Hoffenheim's Niklas Sule and Sebastian Rudy, but they won't arrive until summer.

Borussia Dortmund moved quickly to snap up 17-year-old Sweden striker Alexander Isak and Bayer Leverkusen also spent big on a youngster on deadline day, paying 12m euros (£10.3m) for Jamaican teenager Leon Bailey from Genk.

Thank goodness, then, for Turkey's taste for the grand gesture, with champions Besiktas and surprise title-chasers Baskasehir both going for striking experience in Demba Ba (on loan from Shanghai Shenhua) and Emmanuel Adebayor (free agent) respectively.

Emmanuel Adebayor
Former Arsenal, Manchester City, Tottenham and Crystal Palace striker Emmanuel Adebayor was a free agent

It was a quiet window for Serie A in Italy, with Juventus spending big on young talent but parking it for the future; for example, Mattia Caldara, a 15m euro (£12.9m) signing, is staying with his current club Atalanta on loan.

With Barcelona typically quiet and Real Madrid barred from involvement, it was similarly sedate in Spain. Villarreal's sale of Alexandre Pato to Tianjin Quanjian for 18m euros (£15.4m) was comfortably the biggest transfer in La Liga, though Jese's loan move to his hometown club of Las Palmas was a romantic subplot on deadline day.

France was busier than usual this winter, with Julian Draxler (36m euros/£30.8m) and Goncalo Guedes (30m euros/£25.7m) both joining Paris St-Germain for big fees, and Lyon splashing out on Memphis Depay (18m euros/£15m). On deadline day it was Lille, under new ownership, who were busiest, signing no less than six in a frenetic 24 hours, led by winger Anwar El Ghazi from Ajax for 8m euros (£6.9m).

Premier League transfer tracker

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68 comments

  • Comment posted by Pauliethebloke, at 07:28 1 Feb 2017

    Viz summed it up perfectly

    "Recreate transfer deadline day by sitting in your works canteen. Then wait until the last minute and buy a pot noddle for £25"

    A load of media hype over nothing. I know I'm being a boring middle aged man but I hate modern day football

  • Comment posted by Me1, at 08:18 1 Feb 2017

    The money is obscene, the attitude of the players is obscene, the agents are obscene, yet the fans and media lap it up.
    The whole sport is a joke.

  • Comment posted by Qcumbor, at 07:24 1 Feb 2017

    Sky prices up. Bt prices up. Manu trying to balance their chequebook spent on rubbish these past few years and fans bored with this endless anal journalism.

    The bubble is bursting...

  • Comment posted by User0609464460, at 05:48 1 Feb 2017

    Just got to be a McNulty article, I lost the will to live half way down

  • Comment posted by User0161511360, at 07:02 1 Feb 2017

    tl;dr

    Condensed version...

    Clubs spend crazy money on overated players, clubs also receive crazy money on overated players.

    Premier League continues to be a soulless rich man's plaything

    Well here's some graphs & stuff

    Also you can click on the face of a player you've never heard of or care about

    Thanks for reading

  • Comment posted by User0766887094, at 06:05 1 Feb 2017

    i wake up and first thing i do is read this boring article.. what has my life come to.

  • Comment posted by donald, at 07:56 1 Feb 2017

    Vat is paid and on all agents fees so at least govt have some money out of it that will be spent in London only.

  • Comment posted by User0941523514, at 11:17 1 Feb 2017

    The boring non-event of deadline day is matched only by this boring article filled with insignificant numbers and charts purporting to be meaningful analysis. Whoever put together this junk should go on Mastermind; specialist subject, The Bleeding Obvious.

  • Comment posted by PranR17, at 03:10 1 Feb 2017

    Guess i'm the only one up at 3am then?

  • Comment posted by D1679393719849, at 07:12 1 Feb 2017

    China ensured that the football merry go round can continue for a while longer , it spent £80m (Ighalo & Oscar). It will be the first & last time there is a British net profit on transfers as recently China’s top sports administrator vowed to cap spending by football clubs, accusing them of burning money and paying excessive wages to foreign players.

  • Comment posted by Buff My Barnaby Rudge, at 12:05 1 Feb 2017

    Football is no longer a sport, it's part business and part soap opera. Transfer fees are obscene, player's wages are obscene, agents fees are obscene and the number of so called journalists, has-been's/never were's and failed managers paid for their "insight" is also obscene. But the very worst thing of all is that the product is sub-standard, poor quality and lacks integrity and credibility.

  • Comment posted by Monkey Hanger, at 12:20 1 Feb 2017

    Pathetic. Did you see any of the embarressing coverage on Sly Sports? It was actually on ALL day with a big countdown clock, guests in the studio and broadcast like it was a general election. Oh dear lord!!!!!!!

  • Comment posted by Monkey Hanger, at 12:23 1 Feb 2017

    @50 re: Chinese super legue:

    "They'll take the mercenaries who are only there for the cash, but until they start producing their own superstars and superclubs, or pay the likes of Man U, Barca, Real, Bayern etc to move their entire operation over there, it'll be an over-priced oddity. The money WILL run out too. "

    Sounds exactly like the Premier League to me

  • Comment posted by User0389026502, at 10:36 1 Feb 2017

    The great pity of everything to do with football today, is the very slanted hype by all forms of media coverage. There is terrible in equality in the game, and it all appears to have started since the champions league was formed. The rich are getting so much wealthier than ever before, and with the addition of obscene sugar daddy wealth , is it not a wonder that the cup competitions are dying.

  • Comment posted by User0389026502, at 10:55 1 Feb 2017

    The amount of media coverage hounding happy players, from many clubs, into becoming unhappy seems to be a cancer, which reaches crisis point as this deadline approaches. What gives media pundits and writers the right to lecture fans on what player should play for which so called " big club ". As a Spurs fan i think it is infuriating, but one wonders what it is like for the less affluent clubs.

  • Comment posted by User0655414600, at 08:48 1 Feb 2017

    Far to much money in football thanks to Sky and BT. I think it has spoilt the game and ruined England. Too many young mediocre players earn too much to quickly. I have recently cancelled both Sky and BT. Fell out of love with the game sadly.

  • Comment posted by User0452243000, at 10:30 1 Feb 2017

    Deadline day was exciting once, the Berbatov year. Since then Sky have tried to latch on to make it this big event, it ain't, it's boring.

    Sky should drop this reporter outside every ground lark and anchor man Jim 'I'll flog anybody's dead horse' White

  • Comment posted by jigglybean, at 08:12 1 Feb 2017

    There's only one real winner from all this greed and nonsense - the Agent. Football is becoming a joke, with below average players demanding high price tags. The majority of players today have zero passion for the club they play for, while Managers make endless excuses not to support domestic cup matches because their pampered poodles can't cope with 2 games a week.

  • Comment posted by The_Yorkshire_Toffee, at 07:06 1 Feb 2017

    Two reasons the league was in overall profit was:

    1. China paying silly money for average players. That will end soon and normal service will be resumed.

    2. Loan fees. Clubs now pay as much as a transfer fee just to loan players.

    And I agree with other posters that it was a dull deadline day not helped by a premier league fixture list.

  • Comment posted by Yeahbaby, at 08:45 1 Feb 2017

    That's a lot of cash for a lot of dross!!!!!!!!!!!

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