The January transfer window is reviled because several managers believe it is too difficult to sign top targets halfway through the season.
Here we are again. We’re officially back in a transfer window, even though it doesn’t feel like we’ve been out of one. It’s not as if the gossip columns have ceased since the summer transfer window closed on August 31. In fact, they have remained very much a maddening yet impossibly irresistible part of our life.
It’s very much been a case of click and you shall see, Philippe Coutinho wants to leave.
But it remains prevalent for a reason. At the end of the day, football fans want to know who might be joining and leaving their club. There is certainly as much – if not more, in some cases – excitement for fans in discovering that their team has secured a major signing and, because of that, the transfer market will remain a source of intrigue and frustration for years to come.
However, our love-hate relationship with it works in overdrive when it gets in the way of the actual football. We had it in the summer. Virgil van Dijk practically went on strike at the start of the campaign to force through a move to Liverpool. Alexis Sanchez played for Arsenal in August despite everyone knowing full well that he was angling for a move to rivals Manchester City.
I feel certain that van Dijk starts on Friday. It just seems like a very Klopp-type decision to start him sooner than anyone's expecting. It's happening. #LFC #VVD pic.twitter.com/0XaHbtCWcu
— Shane (@Koolhanger) January 4, 2018
Then there was Coutinho, who seemed destined for Barcelona for much of the summer yet he remained at Liverpool. As speculation over his future intensified in August, Coutinho went missing. Jurgen Klopp said he had a back injury. Few believed him.
And now, here we are, four months later and staring down the barrel at more of the same. At least Liverpool spared us the vexation by announcing their capture of van Dijk from Southampton before the window actually opened last week.
There will be no saga surrounding him this time. Yet, while he represents a reason for fans to love the January transfer market – a quality reinforcement to bolster the defence just in time for the second half of the season – Coutinho’s long-gestating saga symbolises much of what we despise about ‘silly season.’
Yes, expect a fully-fledged revival of the Sanchez and Coutinho sagas, two dominant narratives which will stretch our love-hate relationship with the transfer window to breaking point.
It’s started to get messy, too. Barcelona’s not-so-secret pursuit of Coutinho plumbed new depths last week with Nike’s extraordinary marketing blunder, advertising shirts bearing the Brazilian’s name on their official website when it’s not even certain that a formal bid has been lodged since Barca tried unsuccessfully to get him in August.
Thanks to that, and several reports suggesting that Coutinho remains desperate to leave in the current window, we’re going to hear much more about his proposed switch to the Camp Nou. You can’t blame anyone, Liverpool fan or not, for getting sick of the messy soap operas that often threaten to overshadow the actual playing of football.
On Coutinho. No offer from Barcelona has arrived yet, despite the insistence of Catalan media on the contrary. But will arrive. No agreement in price but €150 is a figure LFC will consider. Not true at all LFC have bid for Lemar. Coutinho won't play tomorrow pic.twitter.com/j3fJY2mvBj
— Guillem Balague (@GuillemBalague) January 4, 2018
Of course, the managers have no option but to remain tight-lipped, deliberately swerving questions like an under-fire politician. Jurgen Klopp has laughed off persistent questions over Coutinho’s future while Arsenal boss Arsene Wenger has been commendably stony-faced when probed about Sanchez.
We’re only at the start of January yet the speculation surrounding Sanchez and Coutinho is already beginning to exhaust us. With the official line being that Liverpool have not received a bid from Barca, expect speculation and counter-speculation over the next number of weeks.
Will he play against Everton in the FA Cup on Friday night? Probably not. Will the reason given for his absence be some kind of mysterious injury? Probably. Will we believe it? Not a chance.
Then there is Sanchez. While the gifted Chilean has always seemed destined to join Pep Guardiola’s exquisitely assembled winning machine at the Etihad Stadium, Gabriel Jesus’ injury combined with uncertainty over Sergio Aguero’s future and a story regarding a bust-up between Sanchez and his Arsenal teammates mean that we’ve reached peak Sanchez speculation.
There was something endlessly satisfying about the van Dijk being announced as a Liverpool player before the window actually opened, allowing him to join the club on New Year’s Day. We don’t always get so lucky though. More often that not, sagas are drawn out in almost comical fashion so Sky Sports News can roll out the yellow ticker tape for their grotesquely over-blown coverage of TRANSFER DEADLINE DAY.
Thankfully, next year will see an early closure of the summer window, meaning all transfers will be completed before the football season starts (the way it should be). The future of the January transfer window remains undetermined, but it’s likely to continue as that lingering midwinter smell in the years to come.
For the sake of our sanity, hopefully there is a definitive conclusion to the Coutinho and Sanchez sagas sooner rather than later. Arsenal and Liverpool both have a lot of football to play in January and it would be nice if gameplans could be prepared and press conferences could be conducted without the looming uncertainty of player departures.
One suspects that everyone will be glad to see the back of the transfer window by the time it shuts on January 31.
