January signings CAN transform your season

Ahead of Transfer Month on NTT20, Huw Davies challenges the sceptics and celebrates the winter window

Huw Davies

At school, I learned about Neville Chamberlain’s failed policy of appeasement towards Adolf Hitler, and historians’ three schools of thought on the matter. It was a while ago, but I think I remember the gist. 

The first, very popular at the time, was: “Well, this sucks.” That was the traditionalist view. Next, revisionists came along in the 1960s and explained that Chamberlain was actually a genius secretly buying time for rearmament and the conscription of Vera Lynn. Then there were the post-revisionists, leaning over to say, “I think you’ll find it’s a bit more complicated than that”, and that’s where I come in. I’m taking the post-revisionist view on a subject that’s almost as important: the January transfer window. 

“You see, football is a bit like war…”

The traditionalists are those fans, managers and media outlets craving a new striker who’ll score a load of goals and instantly fire their team to promotion. The revisionists are those critics in the mould of George and Ali, or Chad Kroeger and Josey Scott, who observe that value can be hard to find in the January sales, that it isn’t a good idea to rely on a mythical season-saving signing, and that they say a hero can save us but I’m not going to stand here and wait. 

Being a post-revisionist, as of five minutes ago, I believe that January transfers are a good thing and clubs should pursue them if needed, even when they know that one success might come with three failures in tow. The boring but important caveat is that it always depends on a club’s resources, needs and circumstances; however, I doubt any CEOs are reading this column for advice. What I offer is a surprising weight of evidence, and recent evidence, that January signings can pay off either immediately or in years to come.

I’m going to ignore loans, and existing loans that were made permanent in January, of which there are many successful examples. In short: they’re less interesting. It’s not that mid-season loanees can’t have a transformative effect on a club’s campaign – quite the opposite, as Aaron Ramsdale showed with his role in Wimbledon’s great escape of 2018/19 – but there’s less risk involved, which makes them far more common than permanent signings, because what’s the worst that could happen? Committing to a lengthier deal is a very different prospect.

That doesn’t mean it can’t work straightaway, though…

In the final week of January 2012, Championship Reading paid Premier League Blackburn a six-figure sum for Jason Roberts, despite his advancing years. Like a footballing Solomon Grundy, he turned 34 on Wednesday, signed on Thursday and started on Saturday, scoring the only goal as Reading beat Bristol City. He chilled on Sunday.

Royals manager Brian McDermott signed Roberts some 15 years after he was first impressed by the then-teenage striker, who was scoring a hatful for Hayes against McDermott’s Slough side. Roberts was worth the wait. He arrived with Reading 8th, some 11 points off the top of the table, then started 16 of their next 17 matches as they took 46 points from a possible (or impossible) 51 and wrapped up promotion with two games to spare. The veteran scored six goals, set up another five, and all but won Reading the title.

Four years later, Jordan Rhodes was another goalscorer who dropped in to, well, score goals. Middlesbrough were literally banking on it, paying Blackburn £9m on deadline day for his services. Rhodes understood the assignment: he scored six goals, all poachers’ efforts, all coming in draws or one-goal wins, including a 93rd-minute equaliser at MK Dons to open his account and a brace away to Bolton that turned a 1-0 deficit into a 2-1 victory. Boro won automatic promotion on goal difference. Although Aitor Karanka barely used him in the Premier League, Rhodes had already repaid the fee and then some.

These are the strikers who are sold as the dream, and then literally, to promotion-chasing clubs in January. Sylvan Ebanks-Blake was another, in 2007/08. The streets may have forgotten but the 21-year-old scored 11 goals in 25 Championship games for Plymouth and then 12 in 20 for Wolves after they triggered his £1.5m release clause, winning him the Golden Boot across spells with two clubs. When he arrived, Wolves were 10th and undermined by their attack: no team had conceded fewer goals, but no team had scored fewer, either. He fixed the latter, but they still finished outside of the play-off places on goal difference. No matter – Wolves went up as champions a year later, with Ebanks-Blake picking up the pair to his first Golden Boot.

But each of these cases was ages ago, back when the Championship was all fields. Last season, Rotherham continued their strong winter-window tradition, following successes with Matt Crooks (2019), Michael Smith (2018 – more on him later) and club legend Lee Frecklington (2013, albeit already at the club on loan, not that this prevented Steve ‘say the line, Bart’ Evans from proclaiming, “The competition to sign this young man has been fierce, with many clubs interested, but Lee made it clear to all of them that his first choice was Rotherham United”). Perhaps the Millers can find another winner this time around, although having a manager first would help.

In 2022/23, Matt Taylor had won once in 12 matches as he spent more than two months desperately waiting for January. He then made five loan signings – some floor-raising, some eyebrow-raising – and two permanent ones. Sean Morrison was an immediate hit but almost as immediately missed, suffering a season-ending injury after just two games; Jordan Hugill, though, had a huge impact. Rotherham broke their wage structure to sign him, and with due respect to Tom Eaves and Conor Washington, he was just what they needed: a No.9 who could bully opposition defenders but with quality to boot. They wouldn’t have stayed up without him.

It’s rare for a permanent signing made in January to save a team from relegation, assuming they aren’t Carlos Tevez. The uncertain future makes a loan deal safer for club and player alike; Steve McQueen & Co. did fail in their Great Escape, after all (sorry if you were expecting a spoiler alert for a 60-year-old film). So, here’s some very belated appreciation from NTT20 for Adam Bolder and Danny Cullip, who joined QPR at the end of January 2007 when the R’s had just slipped into the relegation zone following 10 defeats in 12 games, and injected some much-needed leadership to keep them up.

Intangibles can go a long way. Just look at Russell Martin. In 2019, the defender joined MK Dons in January, helped them to win promotion in May and became their manager in November. Maybe Rotherham’s next manager is actually Jordan Hugill.

Clubs can choose to ignore an overall low success rate in January when the potential upsides are so massive

January signings can provide immediate impetus. When Jose Fonte joined League One Southampton in 2010, their defensive record duly improved. They were promoted the following season by conceding only 38 goals in their 46 games, before barging straight on through into the Premier League. 

I’ll also mention Michael Smith in 2017/18 here, and then I promise to stop talking about Rotherham for a bit. Having arrived on the back of one goal in 16 starts for bottom-of-the-league Bury, he started every one of the Millers’ remaining League One games, all 23 of them, as they climbed from 7th to 4th and went up through the play-offs. It was the perfect move for Smith as well: Rotherham were his thirteenth club in eight seasons, but he spent the next four and a half years at the New York Stadium. Well, not literally. 

A dog is for life, not just for Christmas, and a January signing is for more than a few months (yes, yes, unless they’re on loan). The mid-seasonness needn’t put off long-term projects. James Tarkowski, a 23-year-old deadline-day buy from Brentford midway through 2015/16, could only watch Burnley’s fantastic second half to their title-winning Championship campaign, but he subsequently became a Premier League mainstay with them. In January 2007, Kaspars Gorkss had a meagre impact on Blackpool’s promotion from League One after joining them aged 24 from Ventspils in Latvia, yet he shone in the 2007/08 season and – after a lot of complaints and now-look-heres about illegal approaches – brought them a decent fee from QPR. Players signed mid-season often need time to adjust. 

There’s a thriving winter market for young talents, sometimes with the player loaned back to the selling club – Norwich snapped up James Maddison (19) from cash-strapped Coventry in 2015/16, gave him another half-season there, and sold him for £20m or so after just 50 appearances in canary yellow. Among others, Alan Browne (18) joined Preston in January 2014 without having made a senior appearance for Cork City and he’s still at Deepdale a decade later, while Ali Al-Hamadi (20 when he signed) will soon fetch Wimbledon a very nice 12-month return on investment.

You can see why clubs might ignore an overall low success rate in January when the potential upsides are so massive. Nasser El Khayati was turning 26 and playing for a Dutch amateur side when Jimmy Floyd Hasselbaink took him to League Two Burton in 2015, in what some would call a bold move. Over the course of one year and two days, El Khayati contributed to Burton’s title win, put them well on course for a second successive promotion by contributing to 11 goals in 24 League One games, and earned the Brewers £350,000 when the since-departed Hasselbaink took him to QPR. Other January 2015 arrivals at the Pirelli weren’t as successful – Stefan Maletic made zero appearances, and you should scroll through the list of Mickael Antoine-Curier’s clubs if you have a spare hour or two. The net gain, though, was unquestionable.

‘Throw enough darts’ shouldn’t hold up as a transfer policy, and yet… it can. To throw another sport into this maelstrom of mixed metaphors, it’s like needing 8 to win from the final over of a cricket match: you can nudge and nurdle ones and twos, which may be enough, or you can take six big swings and hope to club a couple of balls to the boundary. 

Steve Bruce is a cricket fan, so perhaps that was his thinking in January 2017. Aston Villa’s first season outside the top flight since the 1980s had started so badly under Roberto Di Matteo that new owner Tony Xia couldn’t wait to open his cheque book for the Italian’s successor. The following outlay of £20m-plus took Villa to a record-breaking £88m in the season, culminating in a reported wage of £40,000 per week for Scott Hogan, only a few months after Villa had spent north of £25m on strikers Jonathan Kodjia (decent) and Ross McCormack (disastrous). No offence meant to Birkir Bjarnason and James Bree, but it wasn’t a great window. But Bruce did snap up Conor Hourihane from Barnsley and he was instrumental to Villa’s promotion two years later.

However, most Football League clubs can’t sit at these high-stake roulette tables. In fact, another reason to shop in January is because a selling club may be happy to get a fee, any fee, for a player they’d otherwise be releasing that summer. Leicester picked up Wes Morgan near the end of his Nottingham Forest contract in January 2012, a week after they signed Danny Drinkwater from Manchester United. That aged pretty well.

Sometimes this mid-season transfer window can provide a club with the last piece of the jigsaw. Just ask Yann Kermorgant, who explained to UTCIAD that, in January 2014, Eddie Howe “told me he wasn’t usually interested in players over 30 but he thought I could be the last piece of the jigsaw”. See?

Yermorgant was 32 and in the relegation zone with Charlton when the Cherries gave him a two-and-a-half-year deal on deadline day. He scored a hat-trick on his first start and added another six goals in Bournemouth’s final nine games of 2013/14, forming a great partnership with Lewis Grabban, and then an even better one with Callum Wilson in 2014/15. Howe’s charges won the title with Kermorgant setting up 11 goals and, helped by penalties, scoring 15 of his own – including this one, which certainly wasn’t a penalty:

Bournemouth even got a fee for the old-timer, selling him to Reading. That was in January, too, and in his first full season, turning 36 during the campaign, he scored 19 goals for a Royals side that inexplicably finished 3rd before losing to Huddersfield at Wembley in the worst football match of all time. He’s effective, this Kermorgant guy – does anybody fancy tempting him out of retirement next month?

As historians – and well done to anyone who can remember that intro, because it was a while ago now – we can even use January transfers to track a club’s path.

In 2018/19, a mismanaged Sunderland panicked and paid £3m for Will Grigg on deadline day, setting a League One record, and it went poorly. In 2019/20, they gave contracts to Tommy Smith, who didn’t make an appearance, and Kyle Lafferty. But 2020/21 brought new ownership, and although Stewart Donald was still in situ when Ross Stewart arrived in January, it’s thought that the incoming Kyril Louis-Dreyfus helped to fund the Scot’s purchase as well as that of Carl Winchester, another impactful signing. And since then Sunderland have pivoted successfully to signing young players in January, with Trai Hume (19) rocking up in 2021/22 to continue the theme of Northern Irishmen heading to a wintery Wearside. Patrick Roberts (24) followed later that month, and Pierre Ekwah (20) a year later.

But the referee has his whistle to his lips, so it’s time for a speed round. Still not convinced, you revisionist types, that the January transfer window has a positive role to play these days? OK:

January 2023: Ipswich buy Nathan Broadhead and Harry Clarke, take George Hirst on loan and sign Massimo Luongo for nothing, thereby securing promotion from League One and potentially from the Championship as well. In League Two, Gillingham save their season by acquiring Oli Hawkins from Mansfield and Tom Nichols from struggling Crawley, who in turn have new boy Ben Gladwin to thank for bringing midfield composure to a chaotic campaign. Elsewhere there are shrewd signings for Watford (Wesley Hoedt and Ryan Porteous), Birmingham (Kevin Long), MK Dons (Max Dean), Stockport (Isaac Olaofe), Mansfield (Davis Keillor-Dunn) and more.

January 2022: Bolton pay half a million pounds for Dion Charles, Kyle Dempsey and Aaron Morley but more than get their money’s worth; Charles, in particular, scores six goals in his first 10 league games, then overcomes a dip in form to establish himself as one of League One’s premier strikers. A league below them, new arrivals Connor Hall, Chris Hussey and Harry Charsley drive Port Vale on to promotion, while Niall Canavan becomes the heart of a strong Barrow defence that turns them from relegation battlers into promotion contenders. And in the Championship, Riley McGree (around £3m), Ryan Hedges (£200,000) and Jake Bidwell (£0) represent bargains for Middlesbrough, Blackburn and Coventry respectively.

January 2021: Carlton Morris (Norwich to Barnsley), Ben Whiteman (Doncaster to Preston), Harry Pickering (Crewe to Blackburn), Perry Ng (Crewe to Cardiff), Niall Ennis (Wolves to Plymouth), Harry Darling (Cambridge to MK Dons), Priestley Farquharson (Connah’s Quad Nomads to Newport County)... you get it.

Transfers aren’t everything. Football is still played on grass, not fax machines. And clubs shouldn’t bankrupt themselves this winter, just as they shouldn’t bankrupt themselves at any other time. But let’s give January a little love.

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