January’s deadline day keeps punters glued but managers can come unstuckLast January Manchester United, Manchester City and Chelsea bought no one on deadline day – organised clubs do their business earlier 
There have been 74 January deadline-day transfers in the Premier League in the past four years – roughly one signing per hour of Sky's live coverage. Photograph: Matt Johnstone
How much does the January transfer deadline day matter? It is a question rarely asked by those who impatiently skedaddle between Sky Sports News, Twitter and live blogs, itchy for fresh gossip, no matter how vague or violently spun. Perhaps for some the ride is enough: that breathless, hold-on-to-your-smartphone bullet train to Transfer Central, via rumour mill alley and “my-mate-reckons-he-saw” boulevard, with regular stops at QPR’s Harlington training ground. For the rest of us, a few facts might puncture the hype.
Do you know how many January deadline-day transfers into the Premier League there have been in the past four years? According to Omar Chaudhuri, a data analyst with 21st Club, it is just 74. That is, roughly, one signing per hour of Sky’s live coverage. And if you strip out players aged 22 and younger, who are unlikely to play many times during the season in which they are signed – such as Arsenal’s Krystian Bielik – that figure drops to 44, or 11 per deadline day.
Of course, we all remember that caffeine-drenched, triple espresso of an afternoon in January 2011 when Fernando Torres moved to Chelsea for £50m, and Andy Carroll, after 41 Premier League appearances, became the eighth-most expensive footballer in history when he joined fellow new signing Luis Suárez at Liverpool. But that was the deadline day equivalent of a seven-year-old getting the bike they desperately craved on Christmas Day and knowing, even then, that Christmas would never be as mind-blowing again.
Last January, Manchester United, Manchester City and Chelsea bought no one on deadline day. Liverpool wanted the Dnipro Dnipropetrovsk winger Yevhen Konoplyanka but failed. Arsenal wanted Julian Draxler and got Kim Kallstrom. Fulham, meanwhile, spent £11.8m on Konstantinos Mitroglou – but 151 minutes and no goals later he returned to Olympiakos on loan. The best deals happened earlier in the window: Juan Mata to Manchester United for £37.1m, money Chelsea reinvested in Nemanja Matic, Kurt Zouma and Mohamed Salah.
This is how it usually works: the most organised clubs do their business early, leaving the rest to bustle and hustle in the final hours before the window shuts. In January 2013 the highlights of deadline day were Christopher Samba joining QPR for £12.5m and Danny Graham moving to Sunderland for £5m. In January 2012 it was Everton buying Nikica Jelavic and Spurs bringing in Louis Saha. Again, deadline day hype was not reflected by reality.
And yet the myth persists; that the dying embers of the January transfer window are a must-watch for us, and a crucial chuck of the dice for Premier League clubs. You can understand the logic: most teams, wherever they sit in the table, are usually in the market for something, be it to reinforce battered ramparts during a relegation battle or as a midwinter vitamin D shot for a squad seeking trophies or a European spot. And the transfer window is their last chance to get it.
You would expect, therefore, that experienced players bought in January (those aged 23 and older) would tend to play more minutes for their new club than average, but that isn’t happening.
Broadly, the 10 outfielders who appear most often in a team are on the pitch for more than half of the total minutes played. Yet Chaudhuri’s numbers from 2010-11 to 2013-14 show that only half of new January signings reached this 50% mark in the season in which they joined their new club – the same proportion as those already in the first-team squad.
“In other words, new signings are no more utilised on the pitch than players already at the club, despite being brought in specifically to improve the team in the short run,” says Chaudhuri. “Meanwhile, a quarter of these new players fail to play 20% of minutes.”
So why aren’t these new players playing more? It could be down to a number of reasons: the difficulties of integrating a new member halfway through the season; the failure of clubs’ scouting teams to identify the right players; injuries and suspensions.
And while the figures change slightly for deals done on deadline day itself, with 57% of those players playing more than half of the available minutes left in the season for their new club, the broad thrust of the argument remains: the January transfer window, which is often considered a potential cure to a club’s midwinter blues, sometimes isn’t even a pick-me-up.
This might be food for thought for managers about to spend millions this deadline day. For every great one-off deadline-day signing – Suárez’s £22m move to Liverpool in 2011 sticks out – there is usually a flip side. Remember that two years ago QPR brought in Samba (on £100,000 a week), Jermaine Jenas and Andros Townsend on deadline day to a squad that already had 12 additions from the previous summer? They still went down.
Indeed, rather than chuck several million pounds at a player – and a perceived problem – a better option might be to blood a youngster from the reserves. Who knows how many other Harry Kanes and Francis Coquelins are out there.
Such an approach would have another benefit, of course. If everyone got as excited about developing talent rather than buying it, then in the long run the national team might benefit too.
Guardian
