<
        >

          Transfer trends: Man United and Milan hustle, Liverpool gamble, strikers stay put

          • Ryan O'HanlonAug 1, 2023, 10:46 AM ET
            Close
              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."
            Follow on X

          When we did this two weeks ago, there had been around 450 transfers into and out of Europe's Big Five leagues so far in the summer window. Teams had spent €2 billion ($2.2 billion) on the fees associated with acquiring those players.

          Today? We're north of 700 transactions, and clubs have already surpassed €3 billion on transfer fees. So, over the last 14 or so days, some 250 players have officially changed clubs for a billion dollars -- and that doesn't even include the wages being paid to those players.

          You -- even if you, reader, are yourself a large-language model -- can't keep track of all that, so we've sifted through the last two weeks of market activity and pulled out some of the major takeaways. The Premier League season starts next Friday, but the window is open for another month. There's plenty more to come -- desperation and deadlines are about to start kicking in. For now, though, here's what you need to know.

          Not much has happened -- outside of Manchester, Milan, and the Saudi sides

          I'm sort of cheating here, OK? While a ton of individual moves have happened, the top of the market has barely budged. Over the past two-plus weeks, seven players have officially moved for a fee of at least €30 million:

          My first observation is that more than half of those players are headed to teams owned by the Public Investment Fund (Saudi Arabia's trillion-dollar sovereign wealth fund): Al Hilal, Al Ittihad and Newcastle.

          The second is, well, how many of those moves really move the needle? The Malcom move seems fake -- no one else was trying to sign Malcom for anything like that amount of money -- and it's a deal between clubs owned by the Saudi Arabian and Russian governments. Read into that however you like. Meanwhile, Barnes is a fine player, but he's never really kicked on to go from "good young player" to "actually good player". He seems like a league-average winger to me.

          Fabinho had his worst season at Liverpool last season. And Mahrez, while still a quite effective winger at age 32, was no longer a starter at City.

          The status of the Saudi league is still mostly where it was a few weeks ago. Although they made a truly absurd billion-dollar offer to take Kylian Mbappe from Paris Saint-Germain for just a single season, the French superstar didn't even take their call. Other reports suggest they're attempting to acquire Victor Osimhen from Napoli, but the league still hasn't really shaken up the top of European soccer. If it's accomplished anything, it's that bigger clubs have been able to get tens of millions of dollars in transfer fees for older players who never would've commanded those returns before the Saudi government's sudden investment in the sport.

          It bears repeating: These moves do not happen if both the clubs and the players agree to them. No one is being "raided" -- as of now, big clubs in Europe have found a new source of unexpected revenue, and they're aggressively exploiting it since the massive paydays are appealing to a lot of these players who are toward the ends of their careers. This could all change at some point, but as of now, no star in their prime with a chance to win lots of major trophies has cashed out.

          As for the other moves, Diaby to Villa just reinforces the financial power of the Premier League. He's averaged more than 10 goals and 10 assists over the previous two Bundesliga seasons, he's 24, he's made 10 appearances for the France national team ... and he's joining the club that are currently projected to finish eighth in the Premier League by the betting markets. He joins Pau Torres (23 Spain caps) and Youri Tielemans (60 Belgium caps) as part of Unai Emery's squad revamp.

          Kim to Bayern just feels like a pretty standard Bayern move. Their center-back play last season was pretty awful at times last season, and Kim was probably the best center-back in Europe. He's 26, relatively young for a player at that position.

          And then there's Onana...

          Manchester United: moving in the right direction?

          It used to be an annual tradition. Every summer, Manchester United would sign a couple famous players -- most of whom had already played their best soccer -- we'd all convince ourselves that this was going to be the next great team at Old Trafford and then they would massively disappoint. This has been the case almost every season since Sir Alex Ferguson retired and in the handful of seasons it hasn't been the case, it's always been the case the following season.

          United have won more than 70 points in a season three times since 2012. The first two occurrences were immediately followed by sixth-place finishes. The third? Well, we'll have to see what happens in 2023-24.

          However, United's moves this summer have been broadly facing the right direction. In terms of "finding value," it's still not really there, but this is Manchester United we're talking about. They're essentially the only club in Europe to break the "wages are destiny" rule, and they've broken it in the wrong direction.

          Despite being one of the three or four richest clubs in the world, their average finish by season since Ferguson left is outside of the top four (4.4). An algorithm could have run this team to the same, if not better, results. Given United's resources, even just an average team-building process should lead to much improved performance.

          The big risk for United coming into this summer was thinking they were closer than they actually were to challenging for a title. They finished third, but probably were closer to the fifth- or sixth-best team in the league. (Just look at their goal differential.)

          Rather than nabbing win-now players like, say, Casemiro, who might only perform at a high level for another season or two, United have added 24-year-old Mason Mount to the midfield and 27-year-old Onana in goal. While it hasn't been confirmed yet, they're also on the verge of adding 20-year-old striker Rasmus Hojlund from Atalanta.

          The season doesn't start for another week and Manchester United have signed three comparatively young players at clear positions of need. What is going on?

          Of course, each move doesn't come without its issues. They paid €64.2 million to acquire Mount, who only had a year left on his contract at Chelsea and was coming off the worst season of his career. Onana didn't have a great season in Serie A -- though he was completely lights out in the Champions League -- and he continues the worrying trend of United mainly signing players that Erik Ten Hag has coached or coached against before.

          And Hojlund looks like his transfer is going to cost around €75 million; he's scored nine goals and only played about 1,800 minutes in a Big Five league so far.

          But like I've already said, United's horrible mismanagement over the past decade -- and their massive revenues -- means that, for now, we can grade them on a curve. They signed three players with lots of potential in clear areas of need. That's progress.

          Milan are playing Moneyball

          Former Oakland A's general manager Billy Beane is part of AC Milan's new ownership group, and this summer is making it clear.

          Toward the beginning of the window, they let midfielder Sandro Tonali leave to Newcastle for €64 million. Touted as the new Andrea Pirlo, Tonali was seen as a potential future Milan captain, and the club hadn't finished outside of the top four in his three seasons with the team. He was a starter on the side that won the Scudetto in 2022... but he was also the exact kind of player who Beane was willing to move on from when he was with the A's: one whose reputation exceeded his true level of performance. While he's still only 23, Tonali didn't really progress that much after joining Milan.

          Last season, Tonali took a lot of shots from long range and created a high number of chances for teammates, but a big chunk of that came from set pieces. His ball retention has never been great, and last season he didn't really even pair it with the kind of moves-the-ball-up-the-field profile you'd want from a player who only completed 75% of his passes. There's not a ton of ball-winning either.

          So, while it seemed shocking on its face that Milan were willing to move on from Tonali, it seems to me like they're going to be better without him. These are their moves since Tonali left the club:

          And then there's Yunus Musah, the 20-year-old American midfielder, who's expected to arrive from Valencia for around €20 million.

          Pretty much all of those players -- Loftus-Cheek included -- are what they call in baseball a "post-hype sleeper." These are players who were once thought of as big prospects, then never hit the loftiest heights projected for them. Except, they're still relatively young and breakout seasons can happen at weird times. These players are almost always going to be undervalued by the rest of the market, and they still maintain the possibility of hitting that potential they once offered.

          On top of that, Milan are just simply getting younger, which is probably step one in the Wanna Use Analytics to Help Your Run Your Soccer Team guidebook.

          Getting younger is typically the smart thing to do because it's still not fully understood by clubs how early soccer players tend to peak -- usually in the 24 to 28 range -- so while you might sacrifice experience, you're building a team out of players who could all improve at the same time and lead to exponential improvement throughout the squad. Plus, there's also the added benefit for a team that exists where Milan currently do in the global financial hierarchy of eventually parting from some of these players for a sizable transfer fee.

          I don't know how many of these players are going to hit, but my guess is that at least a couple of them do.

          Do defensive midfielders matter?

          Liverpool are at least asking the question!

          They're the big club that's been most affected by the Saudi interest in scooping up soccer stars. They've lost two thirds of their starting midfield from almost the entire Jurgen Klopp era: Fabinho and then club-captain Jordan Henderson in a €14 million move to Steven Gerrard's Al Ittifaq. Imagine writing that sentence two years ago?

          As I wrote earlier, the club said "yes" to both of these moves. This wasn't PSG activating Neymar's release clause at Barcelona. They saw the performance of these players, compared it to the transfer fees on offer, and decided €54 million for the pair was worth it.

          In terms of building for the long-term: of course it is. Fabinho might have already begun his decline, and he's the fifth-most-expensive departure in club history. Henderson leaving is complicated and incredibly depressing for a number of different reasons, but getting nearly €15 million for a 33-year-old midfielder is how you rebuild the team you built to peak a year or two ago.

          The outlines for the next great Liverpool team are certainly there now. Heading into this season, they have nine players between the ages of 18 and 22 who will likely play significant minutes:

          Throw in Diogo Jota, (maybe) Joe Gomez, and Luis Diaz -- all 26 -- and the core of this team is quite young all of a sudden. And if reports are to be believed, it's going to get even younger, as Liverpool are in negotiations with Southampton to acquire 19-year-old defensive midfielder Romeo Lavia.

          It certainly feels like the plan is to supplement that group of players with the hopefully extended high-level careers of Alisson, Mohamed Salah, and new captain Virgil van Dijk.

          Looks like a pretty good plan. The only problem is, uh, who's going to protect the defense this season? A month ago, I probably would've said Fabinho was the starting holding midfielder coming into the season, with Henderson as the second option. They're both... no longer on the team.

          If Lavia is signed, he could jump right in -- probably will, based on the rumored fees -- but he was good for an 18-year-old last season. I think, at best, you'd say he's currently a league-average defensive midfielder, which is incredible for someone that age and bodes really well for his future, but a league-average defensive midfielder is not going to improve Liverpool in the short-term. It'll likely make them worse.

          So, either more signings are on the way, or Klopp is hoping that the last-season change of system -- with Trent Alexander-Arnold sliding into the midfield in possession -- combined with much more active eights and a better press from the front will lessen the demands on any single player in that band of space in front of the back line.

          Maybe a rotation of Lavia, Thiago, Bajcetic, Jones, Mac Allister and even Alexander-Arnold through that spot will be enough to make things work without Champions League matches to worry about.

          If not, then expect more of what we've seen from Liverpool so far this preseason: They're averaging four goals per game, but they're letting in two per match on the other end.

          Strikers stuck as Mbappe, Kane figure out futures

          The last time we checked in on the transfer market, I wrote this about the lack of movement at the center forward position:

          "[G]iven that a bunch of these rumors are interconnected and that there are a lot of individual rumors, my guess is that one of the big names changes clubs at some point, it leads to changes elsewhere, and we see a bunch of other center-forwards on the list of most expensive transfers by summer's end".

          I've got another month to be proven right, but Hojlund is the only big-money striker to move since, and that transfer won't have much of a knock-on effect at the top of the market since he's leaving Atalanta. Bayern Munich and Tottenham Hotspur are still negotiating over Harry Kane. Dusan Vlahovic and Romelu Lukaku still play for Juventus and Chelsea. Victor Osimhen's status with Napoli feels like it might hinge on what happens with Mbappe and PSG. And Folarin Balogun and Jonathan David, who both had fantastic seasons in France, haven't gone anywhere, either.

          The potential for Mbappe to change clubs feels like it's temporarily removed Madrid and PSG from the striker market. Bayern seem dead-set on Kane, and Spurs don't seem likely to bring in a replacement unless that move actually happens. Combine that with the strange tactical development away from traditional strikers only to now suddenly go back toward them, and you get a market where the only real established players you can be confident in are in their 30s, so your options are to spend big on someone unproven or wait to see what happens once one of the big names moves.

          At the rumored fees, somewhere in the €40m-ish range, Balogun feels like he'd be the classic striker "steal." At 21, he scored 15 non-penalty goals with Reims last season. Pretty good! But that came from 21 non-penalty expected goals. Maybe all those misses are scaring teams off, but given everything we know about how goal-scoring works, the more likely outcome is that more of them start to go in. Someone should take the chance.