A dose of deadline day nostalgia
Posted on 02/02/2010Let’s be honest, this year’s January transfer window carried about as much excitement as a Tuesday evening episode of “Eggheads” where, for those of you who haven’t seen it, a bunch of the country’s brainiest quiz-players prove they are bigger bookworms than five equally humourless hopefuls. Unless the prospect of seeing Alan Hutton raiding down Sunderland’s right flank or the vision of Mido looking moody on West Ham’s bench does anything for you, deadline day was a damp squib. It hasn’t always been that way though, as the Daily Mirror’s Marton Lipton recalls in a trip down memory lane...
That first window - and remember, this was six months before the arrival of Roman Abramovich at Chelsea changed the face of football forever - saw around £40 million spent by the top flight clubs.Big deals included Robbie Fowler leaving Liverpool for Manchester City, who also signed French defender David Sommeil, with the pair costing £39.5m, while Newcastle asset-stripped doomed Leeds to take Jonathan Woodgate to St James Park for £9m.
With the exception of 2007, where the one stand-out deal saw Ashley Young move from Watford to Aston Villa for just under £10m, that money has risen every year. The 2008 window saw the biggest jump, with £150m and Chelsea responsible for a big chunk of that with the arrivals of £15m Nicolas Anelka and Branislav Ivanovic.
Last January, it reached an eye-popping £170m, more than half of which was spent by newly-rich City - Wayne Bridge, Shay Given, Nigel De Jong and Craig Bellamy - and Spurs - who re-signed Robbie Keane, Jermain Defoe and Pascal Chimbonda and acquired Wilson Palacios - between them.It would have been even more, of course, had City’s quest to land Kaka from AC Milan not fallen through.
But fast forward 12 months and spot the difference. Prior to the Adam Johnson signing, City had added only veteran Patrick Vieira.
Even Harry Redknapp has got rid of more players than he has brought in, forcing Pompey’s hand to land Younes Kaboul and taking Eidur Gudjohnsen while divesting himself of Alan Hutton, Kyle Naughton - who will be back - and Keane, all on loan deals.And the Big Four have also kept their powder dry, even if Manchester United have invested in the future by beating Arsenal - not for the only time in the last few days - to £10m Fulham defender Chris Smalling. For those who did not want a sight of Carlo’s Ance-botti, it was probably good news that Chelsea - having received dispensation from the Court of Arbitration for Sport - chose not to spend, while Arsene Wenger, despite insisting he has the cash, did not pull an Andrey Arshavin-sized rabbit out of the hat.
Even Liverpool, desperately scrambling to get back into the Champions League slots, have only taken Argentine winger Maxi Rodriguez from Atletico Madrid.
Away from the football world, there seem to be much more pressing issues to resolve, like where the fussy Carl Froch wants to fight Mikkel Kessler. These boxers are always attributed tags such as ‘warrior’ and ‘braveheart’, but the Daily Mail’s Jeff Powell suggests Froch’s complaints about the choice of Herning over Copenhagen as the location for the Kessler bout is doing the Briton no good...
Froch complains that his fans will find it nigh-on impossible to travel to Herning, where Mikkel Kessler expects to have the vast majority of a sell-out 10,000 crowd roaring on their Viking warrior. If Froch could have his way, this potentially explosive collision would take place in wonderful, wonderful and easy-to-reach Copenhagen. Not, as he puts it, 'in an industrial estate in the middle of nowhere'.Froch suspects that the choice of such an out-of-the-way location is being made deliberately to deprive him of support, although promoter Kalle Sauerland insists that no hall with anything approaching five-figure capacity is available in the Danish capital on the appointed night of April 17.
Does it really matter?
Great champions venture into the backyards of even the most dangerous contenders and come away with their belt still buckled around their waist. Surviving just such a hostile environment is Froch's impending challenge. In its off-the-beaten-track way, Herning offers a reasonable counter-balance to his enjoyment of home-town advantage in two of his three group bouts from which the Super Six semi-finalists will emerge.
And while Nottingham is a significantly larger dot on the map than Herning, no doubt both Andre Dirrell and Arthur Abraham would have preferred to meet Froch under the brighter and more accessible lights of London.