It’s now two days since the end of the Premier League’s most absurd transfer window yet, and to be honest we’re still trying to work out how to even begin processing the sheer volume of nonsense.
Who won? Who lost? How to even define these things? Does any of it even matter? This was the summer when the Chelseafication of the transfer market was complete. A summer marked not just by the absurdity of the sums being thrown around in transfer fees but the sense that it didn’t even really matter.
There’s something distinctly housing bubble about it all, about how it doesn’t seem to matter what you do the value just keeps going up anyway. The sheer breadth of the money-spunking exercise has become its own defence mechanism. Spent £100m on a dud? Fear not, someone will soon be along to give you £80m for them anyway.
How do you try to apply reason to a world where Chelsea can spend £60m on Mykhailo Mudryk, watch him be quite crap for a while and then banned for another while, and then agree a deal that means this time next year they might turn a profit?
You can’t. But we have to try. So we’re going to attempt that by going back to the deep, dark depths of three weeks ago, just before actual Premier League football rudely intruded again, when we attempted to identify the 10 biggest problems or most conspicuously gaping holes across the Premier League as the transfer clock ticked, and see whether any of them actually got sorted. Or, again, whether any of them actually mattered at all.
Tottenham’s striker
Perfect place to start, isn’t it? Because the answer here is… kind of? Maybe? It’s suitably unclear anyway.
Spurs have added Savio, Omar Marmoush and Mykhailo Mudryk to their squad since then. They have not (yet) shifted either Dominic Solanke or Richarlison, who do appear to be the two remaining players at the club with the spikiest relationship with the spiky Roberto De Zerbi.
De Zerbi has already talked about a double-figure goals target for Savio this season and it does seem Spurs will have a collective approach to arriving at a suitable overall tally.
Marmoush does look like a smart addition, and the last striker to decide trying to compete for minutes with Erling Haaland at Man City was a futile, career-wasting endeavour has done all right.
But he’s not a pure number nine either. The lack of real links with such a player – the other big attacking targets that fell through for Spurs were Cody Gakpo and Iliman Ndiaye – suggest maybe De Zerbi doesn’t want one. Because he really did get given pretty much everything he did ask for.
Two Premier League games into the season, Spurs haven’t yet scored a goal or particularly looked like scoring a goal. So whatever this new-look attack is going to be, it does need to be it really quite soon to prevent an understandably if amusingly stuttering start for a club at last throwing its transfer weight around becoming another whole season of doom and despair.
Manchester City’s midfield
This was a post-Community Shield kneejerk and one should always be wary of a post-Community Shield kneejerk. Such things are dangerous enough after the actual football has started, never mind a friendly.
But it really did look in Cardiff like a midfield of Elliott Anderson and Mateo Kovacic wasn’t really going to work, and City duly responded as City now do by throwing another nine-figure sum at the problem to bring in Enzo Fernandez from Chelsea.
Fernandez was already guaranteed pantomime-villain status in the Premier League this summer after his World Cup antics with Argentina. Becoming the poster boy for a summer of such extreme and untethering largesse by moving from one of the Premier League’s two most notorious money-chuckers to the other represents a bold doubling-down on that status. There will be plenty who are willing him and City to fail, even if it does mean the previously well-liked Anderson becoming collateral damage.
Manchester United’s defence
The necessary surgery was completed on the midfield, but the risks of sticking with a creaking and ageing defence have already been on display in United’s first couple of games in which a pair of promoted teams have helped themselves to four goals against a defence that four years ago was shipping four at Brentford.
There’s going to be an awful lot of strain on that defence when the two-game-a-week schedule kicks in. A lot has been staked on Luke Shaw remaining fit and reliable for pretty much the entirety of the next four months.
Liverpool’s fitness
A lot of this summer’s focus has landed inevitably upon City and Chelsea and Spurs where the most outlandish behaviour has generally been to be found.
So what then to make of Liverpool ending up with the summer’s biggest net spend of the lot when the music finally stopped? And also ending up with a squad that doesn’t really look any better than last season’s.
Bradley Barcola is a thrilling and brilliant but enormously expensive addition to their attack, but Liverpool are still going to need a couple of the thus far underwhelming thrilling and brilliant but enormously expensive additions to their attack from last summer to really kick on if it’s going to mean anything.
As for the specific issue of fitness, Liverpool have scored two late equalisers in a pair of 2-2 draws to start the season. So maybe they’re fine. Or maybe there are deeper issues, because this time last year they were busy scoring last-minute winners that turned out to be masking some significant issues. Maybe it’s just a coincidence. Maybe it’s all just a bunch of stuff that happened. Maybe none of it means anything at all.
Chelsea’s goalkeeper
Yes! Finally, a clear and decisive tick. This was an obvious problem before a ball was kicked. Became an even more obvious problem in the first game of the season. And was then addressed.
In a summer where nobody agrees on anything, let us all revel in the common ground that Emi Martinez is better than Robert Sanchez.
Thank you, Chelsea, for providing this unifying moment.
Obviously, this was the perplexing summer of 2026 so now the worry instead lies in midfield where the departure of Fernandez without replacement does raise a fresh concern. The absence of European football does mean Chelsea can probably muddle through to January with what they’ve got.
As long as Moises Caicedo remains upright, then a rotating supporting cast of your Romeo Lavias, Valentin Barcos and Reece Jameses might be enough until Chelsea get another chance to throw £80m at the problem in January.
The alternative, of course, is the desperate but always entertaining option of taking a punt on the Free Agent Lucky Dip.
Given Spurs’ enduring fondness for Chelsea cast-offs, flops and unwanted spare parts, there would be something particularly delicious in the Blues opting for Yves Bissouma or, if you really want to unleash the most banter option of all, Tanguy Ndombele as a suitable warm body just to fill a squad place until the new year.
Aston Villa’s midfield
Another welcome one where we can at least point to specific action taken with the arrival of the vastly experienced Leon Goretzka as a free agent following his Bayern Munich exit an under-the-radar bit of late-August business that might end up looking very canny indeed just as soon as everyone realises it happened.
Villa have endured another summer of upheaval and had to do it all while carefully balancing the chips they must carry at all times on both shoulders, but while there’s been far more change than you’d really like to ideally see we do think they’ve come out of it all… okay. They’ve done some really smart business all over the pitch despite the undeniably disconcerting and disorientating effect of having so much of the spine that has underpinned their recent success – Martinez, Konsa, Tielemans, Rogers, Watkins – ripped out.
We’re certainly more confident that their goalless, pointless start to the season is more of a blip than certain other goalless, pointless starts to the season anyway.
Newcastle’s Newcastle
Forget about this one. Turns out Matthias Jaissle is actually a genius and everything is fine actually.
The only possible spanner in the Newcastle works now is the undeniable fear that taking four points off Liverpool and Tottenham to start the season has actually told us a lot more about Liverpool and Tottenham than it has about Newcastle.
We’ll know far more about the true value of those two fine results after they play a less silly club. Bournemouth this weekend looks ideal.
Fulham’s manager
Alvaro Arbeloa, the Temu Xabi Alonso, is already the Sack Race favourite despite Tottenham’s struggles and the fact Mr Marinakis hasn’t sacked a manager in weeks and must surely be itching to go again.
We understand the reasons why both thought it might be time to move on, but Fulham and Marco Silva really did feel like one of those rare alignments of the right manager for the right club at the right time.
That’s definitely a contributing factor in why Arbeloa always felt to us like the flimsiest of the various managerial newcomers that we’ve got up and down the Premier League this season.
Coventry’s Sky Bet vibe
Yeah, they still absolutely whiff of the Sky Bet unfortunately. And having lost to Hull their fixture list now comes with a worrying look. They’ve got Man City, Brighton, Forest and Newcastle over the next month or so and could already be starting to look adrift before the respite offered by a trip to Dr Tottenham in late October.
While the focus has inevitably been on the money spent by the biggest beasts, in its own way the clearest indicator of just how daft it’s all got is just how hard and expensive it is to de-Championship a promoted team in these game’s-gone days.
Coventry have spent £150m just to end up with a squad that looks at best like Championship Deluxe.
Crystal Palace’s defence
Still very much in ‘Fear for them’ territory here after a pair of defeats, including the sight of a very much work-in-progress Man City stomping all over them last Friday night.
Have brought in Axel Disasi on loan from Chelsea because apparently at some point all Premier League teams are obliged to bring in Axel Disasi on loan from Chelsea. There’s a rota system in place.
They’ve also got Honest Ahanor on loan from Chelsea but not actually from Chelsea because that’s not allowed. He’s joining Chelsea next summer but is technically on loan at Palace from Atalanta this season. It’s a transfer that makes us feel a bit queasy, and it being about a player quite literally called ‘Honest’ does feel a touch on the nose. Sure, it’s not the only one, but it does appear to be a deal quite openly sticking two fingers up to the rules as it gleefully gallops through the loophole it’s found.
The Chelsea-flavoured feel is complete with the return of Ben Chilwell, who spent time on loan with Palace a couple of seasons ago and arrives now from Strasbourg.
Easy to just roll your eyes at it all, but we have years of transfer-window experience now and let us tell you that football clubs only sign an injured Ben Chilwell on deadline day when they are very distressed.
