Doing deals during the winter break is
usually a bad sign, with teams trying to make up for a poor start to the
season by scrambling for what little talent is available
It's tempting to believe that the January transfer market could offer the cure for a team's bad season. That, however, would be to ignore the very reasons why clubs end up in the winter sales in the first place. Sub-standard performances on the part of the players and the need to rectify mistakes in bygone windows are just two reasons why teams are forced to compete for signings in January.
Clubs who find themselves requiring reinforcements at the turn of the year are at an immediate disadvantage. Firstly, the pool of players willing to be transferred or deemed expendable by their clubs is much smaller than in the summer. Also, there are no players available on free transfers. That all means that clubs have to decide whether or not to spend a bigger percentage of their annual transfer budget on an overvalued player in the winter rather than wait until the end of the campaign.
Napoli are close to sealing deals for Ivan Strinic, a left-back, as well as the striker, Manolo Gabbiandini. The club's president, Aurelio Di Laurentiis, withheld transfer funds in the summer as the club had not yet negotiated their way through the Champions League play-off against Athletic Bilbao.
Kalidou Koulibaly, David Lopez and Jonathan de Guzman were the only permanent arrivals and all three could be deemed to be failing to meet expectations. As such, Rafael Benitez's squad was insufficient to surpass the Basques and Di Laurentiis' gamble backfired.
Napoli were left with a squad ill-equipped to deal with a Serie A campaign as well as Europa League football. They ran out of steam towards the end of 2014 in the league, winning only one of their last five, and are 12 points off the top. For a team expected to be - along with Roma - the closest challengers to Juventus this season, that is a disaster. Given their troubles, Benitez has found his position under threat and he could leave the club in June when his contract expires.
He is a supreme tactician but like at Valencia, Liverpool and Inter, he has been left rudderless in the transfer market and is attempting to extract the maximum output from an imbalanced squad. Now Napoli are hoping to shore up their squad halfway through the season and hope it will be enough to fight on three fronts in the New Year.
Liverpool, on the other hand, could be said to have over-spent in the summer. Their coach, Brendan Rodgers, has been left trying to integrate seven new players and has failed to do so to this point. He has issues all over his squad due to the signing of so many players at once with the Luis Suarez money.
Javier Manquillo and Alberto Moreno have not convinced in the full-back positions, Dejan Lovren has already been supplanted at centre-back, while Lazar Markovic looks a player too many in midfield. Further forward, and Adam Lallana can't make himself a certified starter and Rickie Lambert is a decent back up but is being asked to lead the line. The less said about Mario Balotelli, the better.
Out of the Champions League and off the pace in the league, Liverpool might be tempted to rectify their problems in the January window. The signs, however, are that they are incapable of landing two players the quality of Philippe Coutinho and Daniel Sturridge like they did a couple of seasons ago. Teams will not sell to Liverpool at a cut price given their need for urgent improvement. Moreover, given Rodgers's difficulty in accommodating the summer signings, two or three more in the winter might only bring more headaches.
Borussia Dortmund have well-documented problems too. They finished last season second-top. They went into the winter break second-bottom. Jurgen Klopp's football has not hit the mark as it has in recent seasons; Dortmund were Champions League finalists in 2013 with largely the same personnel.
The departures of Mario Gotze and Robert Lewandowski have crippled them this season, though. Lewandowski's replacements, Ciro Immobile and Adrian Ramos, have failed to hit their mark, while Dortmund's inability to carve out chances while dominating possession has characterised their season and hinted at their failure to replace World Cup winner Gotze.
Injuries have bitten hard too, with Mats Hummels, Ilkay Gundogan and Marco Reus missing large tranches of the season with various knocks and strains. As such, Dortmund are already in the market, bringing in the highly-rated Slovenian Kevin Kampl from Red Bull Salzburg for around €10 million.
Dortmund have made no secret in the past that their continued modus operandi is entirely contingent on Champions League qualification on a yearly basis, thus guaranteeing the prize money needed to compete with Bayern in the Bundesliga and with the top teams around the continent. Klopp and sporting director Michael Zorc, however, have been forced to dip into their 2015 transfer budget already.
Again, it's a high-stakes gamble. If that €10m investment in Kevin Kampl fails to secure Champions League football, then will Dortmund be forced to offload yet more stars like Hummels and Reus in the summer?
There can be the occasional quick fix but often the most successful January transfers are those which bring players to clubs on a long-term, developmental basis. Consider the examples of Marcelo to Real Madrid in January 2007 or Nemanja Matic to Chelsea last year and it becomes apparent that the January window is less about finding a way out of trouble for the next six months and more about using it as an early opportunity to solidify the squad for many seasons ahead.
It is a rare thing indeed that a player, or indeed a group of players, can come into a club and remedy its ills. Real spent over €40m in the 2008-09 January transfer window on Klaas-Jan Huntelaar, Lassana Diarra and Julien Faubert to no great avail. They went out of the Champions League in the last 16 and finished nine points back from Barcelona. The signings of Huntelaar and Diarra are particularly illustrative. Each was signed for around €20m, demonstrating the necessity to pay over the odds for players of a particular profile halfway through a season.
The quick fixes are more suited to teams further down the table. The example of Christophe Dugarry signing for Birmingham City in 2003 is often cited as the reason they stayed up that year. Unless a deal like Matic materialises and clubs are satisfied that the player can provide an immediate boost as well as a long-term benefit to the team, then money is best spent in summer.
Chelsea paid €25m for Matic, no small fee, but easy for a club of their financial might. There are not many teams who can afford to spend so readily in the January market.
So it's just a case identifying the right players from the list of those available for the right price, and then integrate them into the team with the expectation that it all works out short and long term.
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