The 2012 January Transfer Window Closes With A Whimper

There was a lack of real excitement during the final day of the 2012 January Transfer Window, with none of the Premier League’s big names on the move and a subsequent drop in spending from the same day 12 months ago means the latest transfer window closed without much of a noise.

The speculation that ran wild from Sky Sports News reporters situated at Premier League grounds became boring with attention being finally turned to actual fixtures that took place on the night.

As far as Premier League transfer activity was concerned, the busiest clubs in the January window was QPR, followed by Chelsea and Everton but the major trend set was that clubs quite sensibly were intent on cutting wage bills. This meant that a lot of less well known players were moved on.

Chelsea had already signed Gary Cahill from Bolton for £7m and added the most expensive signing of the window in the form of Kevin de Bruyne from Genk for a further £9m; they also brought in Patrick Bamford from Nottingham Forest for an undisclosed fee. The Blues also took the trouble to unload seven players to a variety of clubs either on loan deals or free transfers, although they did receive £4m for defender Alex who moved to PSG and Nicholas Anelka had already made a move to China..

Mark Hughes seems to relish these Transfer Windows, he was always very busy at Manchester City and busy at his new Club Queens Park Rangers. Hughes welcomed in a twin strike force of Djibril Cisse from Lazio for £4m and surprisingly added Bobby Zamora to his squad from Fulham for £6m. He also snapped up Nedum Onuoha from his old club Man City for £2.5m. Ferderico Macheda of Man Utd also joined him on loan as did Samba Diakite and Taye Taiwo from Nancy and AC Milan respectively.

Everton paraded their new signing Nikica Jelavic signed for £5.5m from Rangers at half time in their 1-0 Premier League win over Man City before later announcing they had also re-signed Steven Pienaar from Spurs on loan. The pair joined another former Evertonian who had already returned to Goodison Park, Landon Donovan, from LA Galaxy and Darron Gibson who had signed for £2m earlier this month from Man Utd. Gibson in fact paid back some of his fee by scoring the winning goal in the win against City, a goal of course that helped his old club in the Premier League Title Race as much as it did his new one with United now level on points with City at the top of the table. MEanwhile, through the exit door at Goodison Park went Louis Saha on a free transfer to Spurs as well as the out of favour, Diniyar Bilyaletdinov, who went back to Russia.

It was interesting to note that apart from Queens Park Ranger, those clubs threatened with relegation made only minor changes to their squad and none that could seemingly carry any major influence in the outcomes of their seasons. That said, Wolves may have struck lucky with the loan signings of Emmanuel Frimpong from Arsenal and Sebastian Bassong from Spurs, although the way Wolves are playing they have a big task on their hands to help turn it around and as it stands, the current bottom three of Wigan, Wolves and Blackburn looked destined for relegation.

Related posts:

1. January transfer window: see who is where.
2. January window edges closer for Hodgson
3. The Brazilians Taken by the Transfer Window
4. Transfer Speculation Increases As New Premier League Season Nears
5. Premier League is taking shape