Deadline day a dud? Chelsea deals push spend to £130m

(Image credit: 2014 Getty Images)

published 3 February 2015

It was arguably the dullest deadline day in Premier League history, not so much a manic Monday as a mundane Monday. Were it not for Chelsea, the good folk in the Sky Sports studio might have fallen into a deep sleep as their manufactured media hype fell flat.

• The Blues completed the £23.3m signing of winger Juan Cuadrado from Fiorentina, while offloading forward Andre Schurrle to Wolfsburg for £22m and Ryan Bertrand to Southampton for an undisclosed fee. The deal for Cuadrado also involved loaning the Italian club Mohamed Salah so all in all it was a busy day at the Bridge.

• But elsewhere it was quieter than an Emirates corporate box on matchday. Arsenal, Liverpool and Manchester City resisted the urge for any last-minute shopping (in fact the Reds didn't dip into the transfer market at all in January), while Manchester United's only bit of business was to sell Wilfried Zaha to Crystal Palace, allow Daren Fletcher to join West Bromwich Albion on a free transfer and sign 21-year-old Bolton defender Andy Kellett on loan. No, the earth didn't move for us either.

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• Elsewhere Tottenham loaned Aaron Lennon to Everton and Stoke's German defender Robert Huth joined Leicester on loan. The Lilywhites also signed MK Dons highly-rated midfielder Dele Alli for what's believed to be £5m but immediately loaned him back to the League One club.

• Southampton, as well as landing Bertrand, also welcomed midfielder Filip Djuricic on loan from Benfica.

And that was about it on a day when few felt much excitement. As Match of the Day host Gary Lineker tweeted it was, all in all, "like Pancake Day without pancakes".

• Nonetheless the £130m spent on deadline day matched that of the last day of the 2014 January window and was more than double the £60m spent in the same 24 hour period in 2012. But it was peanuts compared to the record £225m splashed in 2011 when Fernando Torres moved from Liverpool to Chelsea for £50m and the Reds immediately snapped up Andy Carroll from Newcastle for £35m. And what great acquisitions they both turned out to be.

Dan Jones, a partner in the sports business group at Deloitte, told BBC Sport that "given the record level of spending seen in the summer, it is not entirely surprising that we haven't seen a new record for the January window". Nonetheless as the accountants noted last month the Premier League clubs posted record revenues last year so they do have the cash at their disposal. Perhaps there's just not the talent out there.

January's Premier League signings:

Arsenal

Krystian Bielik (£2.4m), Gabriel Paulista (£11.2m)

Aston Villa

Carles Gil (£3.2m), Scott Sinclair (Loan)

Burnley

Michael Keane (Undisclosed)

Chelsea

Juan Cuadrado (£23.3m)

Crystal Palace

Shola Ameobi (Free), Yaya Sanogo (Loan), Pape Souare (Undisclosed), Jordon Mutch (Undisclosed), Lee Chung-yong (Undisclosed), Wilfried Zaha (Undisclosed), Keshi Anderson (Undisclosed), Andreas Breimyr (undisclosed)

Everton

Aaron Lennon (Loan)

Hull

Dame N'Doye (Undisclosed)

Leicester

Robert Huth (Loan), Andrej Kramaric (£9m), Mark Schwarzer (Free)

Liverpool

None

Manchester City

Wilfried Bony (£28m)

Manchester United

Sadiq El Fitouri (Undisclosed), Victor Valdes (Free), Andy Kellett (Loan)