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          From desperate spending to the real Super League: January transfer window's trends

          • Ryan O'HanlonFeb 3, 2023, 09:36 AM ET
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              Ryan O'Hanlon is a staff writer for ESPN.com. He's also the author of "Net Gains: Inside the Beautiful Game's Analytics Revolution."
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          I can't get this song out of my head.

          [to the tune of the Burger King "Whopper" jingle] Chelsea, Chelsea, Chelsea, Chelsea. Boehly, Boehly, Boehly, Boehly. Seven-year contracts. Amortization. Think we're done? We keep on spending -- ev-er-y-day. Until THE end -- of the window. At CHEL-SEA, we get our way.

          First: I'm sorry. But if I have to fight this earworm day and night, so do you. Second: if you've even vaguely glanced at transfer news at any point over the past month, you saw that Chelsea were interested in signing someone. And let me tell you: Chelsea probably signed that someone!

          Todd Boehly & Co. overwhelmed and overtook the entire window, and while they were the story of the window, there were plenty of other stories, too. With the windows all shut and a four-month sprint left to finish up the season, let's take a look at some of the lessons from the January window.

          Desperate teams spend in January

          Across the world, 11 teams spent at least €20 million more on transfer fees than they received. Of those 10 teams, nine of them are in some kind of battle at an especially valuable part of the Premier League table.

          Southampton's net spend on transfer fees was higher than all but one other team, and they're bottom of the table. Arsenal were third in spending, and they're trying to hold off Manchester City for their first Premier League title in 20 years. Bournemouth are fourth; they're the favorites for relegation. Newcastle are fifth; they're currently tied on points for the final Champions league spot.

          Likely to the bafflement of their very angry and incredibly online fan base, Liverpool, who still have a decent shot at bouncing back into the top four, were sixth in net spend. Seventh, eighth and ninth: Leicester, Leeds and Wolverhampton. The first two are both one point clear of the bottom three, while the latter are only clear of the bottom three because of a superior goal differential. And then, in 11th, we've got Nottingham Forest, who are four points clear of the bottom three but have the second-worst goal differential in the league.

          The only two relegation fighters who did not spend: West Ham and Everton.

          As I wrote about last week, West Ham are not a relegation-quality team. They have a positive expected-goal differential and should rise up the table over the second half of the season. As for Everton, transferring Anthony Gordon to Newcastle for €45.6 million and bringing in no replacements might seem like the latest folly in a folly-filled decade. But, well, Gordon hasn't produced anything on a soccer field that suggests he's that valuable; it's all purely traits-based projection, and Everton need the money.

          On top of that, Everton have been especially terrible at identifying players in a window where no one seems to be all that good at identifying players. Per analysis by Twenty First Group: "Net transfer spend in January has just a 5% positive correlation with change in points per game, and that €20m in net spending has delivered on average just a 0.03 increase in points per game in the big 5 leagues since 2015."

          Instead of chasing the ghost they've never been able to catch, they invested in Sean Dyche, a new coach who has the potential to improve their points per game by a much larger degree. Fans should be panicking -- they're among the favorites to go down -- but all things considered, I think this was actually a pretty good month for them.

          Chelsea's spending hasn't moved the needle

          What you'll notice about the previous section: it didn't mention Chelsea. Why? Well, they're in 10th place and have just a 7% chance of reaching the top four, according to FiveThirtyEight. If you combine that with their Champions League odds, there's a 12% chance they're in next season's Champions League. There's a tricky balance here, as every move you make increases your spending and increases your need for Champions League qualification. For a Big Six team, the biggest financial hit they can take from one year to the next is dropping out of the Champions League.

          Well, uh, Todd Boehly's Chelsea doesn't care about balance. They've acquired nine players in January for a net spend of €318.2 million. No other team was above €65m! In fact, Chelsea spent more on transfer fees in January than the clubs in Italy, France, Germany, and Spain combined. They've done it by signing most of the players to long-term deals that allow them to spread the transfer fee across the length of the players' contracts for accounting purposes. And to their credit, no one they signed in January is older than 23.

          If all of these players hit, Chelsea will become a superpower. It's just that, you know, most transfers fail. And when combined with all the moves they made over the summer, they've locked themselves into a nearly totally new squad for the next half-decade or more. Based on how things have gone so far, there's nothing to suggest that Chelsea are better at identifying players than anyone else. If anything, there's more to suggest they might be worse.

          We'll see what happens in the long run, but in the short run? At the beginning of the month, the Sporting Index betting market projected Chelsea to finish on 62 points. Since then, they've spent €300 million-plus on new players.

          How did the betting market react to all their new additions? As of Wednesday, they were projected to finish with 61 points.

          The Premier League is the Super League

          You've heard this one already; I've been saying it for half a decade at this point. Here's how the spending broke down across the Big Five leagues:

          A week ago, Deloitte released its latest Money League rankings, based on which clubs brought in the most revenue during the 2021-22 season. A record 11 of the top 20 and 16 of the top 30 were from the Premier League, and this is why the likes of Barcelona, Juventus, and Real Madrid still want the Super League to happen. They're not trying to save the sport; they're trying to save themselves from getting left behind.

          I do think Chelsea's absurd outlay has warped these numbers somewhat, but Premier League clubs spent way more than ever before in this window:

          The most stark examples of the trend are Nottingham Forest and Bournemouth. While Chelsea have claimed the spotlight, Forest have brought in 30 new players since the summer. You read that right: a full matchday squad plus an entire lineup of reserves. After making 23 moves before and during the season, they brought in six more players over the past month.

          There's no clear rhyme or reason to any of it: PSG's Keylor Navas, Jonjo Shelvey and Chris Wood from Newcastle, 33-year-old defender Felipe from Atletico Madrid, and a couple of dudes from Palmeiras in Brazil. These moves do not all appear to be connected with trying to win more games, although that's true with lots of transfers. Forest were projected to finish on 35 points at the beginning of the month. Today, they're projected to earn ... 36.

          As for Bournemouth, they brought in, among others, 21-year-old center-back Ilya Zabarnyi from Dynamo Kyiv, 20-year-old winger Dango Ouattara from FC Lorient and 22-year-old midfielder Hamed Traore from Sassuolo. These are young players with impressive track records either in a Big Five league or in the Champions League.

          In the past, they would've ended up on some Champions League-challenging team in Italy, or Germany, or Spain. Instead, they're joining the club with the worst goal differential in the Premier League.

          Arsenal want to win now

          Although they were chasing after the talented-but-unproven winger Mykhailo Mudryk from Shakhtar Donetsk, Arsenal ended the window in what looks, to me, like a much better spot.

          They're been heavily reliant on a core of 10 players so far this season, all of whom have played at least 70% of the available Premier League minutes. Outside of that core, they seem to have two other players who can maintain their current level or are at least trusted to do so: Eddie Nketiah up top and Takehiro Tomiyasu in the back.

          While there's an outside shot that they could have kept things running until the end of the season, chances are the bottom would have fallen out at some point: either more players would get injured, or some would begin performing worse because of accumulated fatigue. They needed another attacker to rotate in with the front three, they needed at least one more midfielder to provide depth behind Thomas Partey and Granit Xhaka and they probably needed another reliable center-back to step in for William Saliba and Gabriel, who have essentially been on the field for the entire season.

          Although it's really hard to find reliable players who can immediately step in and perform, it sure seems like Arsenal have come about as close to that as you can.

          Up top, they brought in Leandro Trossard, who is 28 and isn't a spectacular player, but now gives Arsenal a league-average attacker behind the standard front three and Nketiah. In the midfield, Jorginho is 31 and on the downside of his career arc, but he has played at a very high level in the Premier League for four-plus seasons now. If either Jorginho or Trossard have to play significant minutes or even starter minutes, it shouldn't be a massive blow to Arsenal's title hopes.

          These aren't sexy moves with long-term potential, but with their five-point lead on Manchester City, Arsenal might never be closer to winning a title than they are now. Both Trossard and Jorginho should help prevent them from falling any farther away.

          Oh, and then they brought in 22-year-old center-back Jakub Kiwior from Spezia for €25 million to balance out the "win-now" moves. He's highly rated by some smart people within the game and although he might not play much this year, he gives Arsenal something they badly need now and will continue to need in the future: depth.

          A big summer might be on the way, for everyone else

          Another fun-sad-happy-neither-guess-it-depends-who-you-are tidbit from the window: the non-Premier League club with the highest net spend in the January window was ... Tigres in Liga MX. They acquired forward Nicolas Ibanez and midfielder Fernando Gorriaran from other Liga MX clubs for a combined €22.3 million, and then didn't transfer out any players for a fee. Elsewhere, MLS and Argentine teams spent more on transfers in January than Serie A and LaLiga clubs.

          Yes, this means the Seattle Sounders are going to win the Club World Cup. No, it just shows how much the gap between the Premier League and everyone else has grown.

          "What's the issue? Essentially, they are 'doping' the club," LaLiga president Javier Tebas said of Premier League clubs at the end of the transfer window. "They are injecting money not generated by the club for it to spend, which puts the viability of the club at risk if the shareholder leaves. In our opinion, that is cheating, because it drags down the rest of the leagues."

          Of course, that Premier League money had to go somewhere, and most of it went elsewhere. Only about €25m of all the Premier League spending went to clubs lower down the English pyramid. The rest of Europe suddenly has a lot of theoretical revenue that it hasn't spent -- and that money will be worth even more this summer. Given that there's frequently a 20% premium on January transfers, the money you make in the winter will be able to bring back way more in the summer.

          The Premier League has a massive -- and still-growing -- financial advantage over everyone else, but there's still very little to suggest that the league is smarter than everyone else, too. We know that the transfer market is wildly inefficient, and yet Premier League clubs just threw close to €1 billion at it. If the rest of the world wants to make sure that the on-field gap doesn't start to match the financial disparity, then perhaps it's time to try something different.