Who won the anti-transfer window?

From Leeds down to Morecambe via Wrexham’s “boring superpower”, retaining players can be as important as signing them

“Success to me is only two things: happiness and stability” – brainyquote.com

Focus demands activity. Movement is what matters. So, in the frenzy that surrounds a player leaving their club for pastures new, we can forget the importance of those who remain. 

I recently heard this said on Dear Ali & George: 

“Many people fall into the trap of thinking teams have no players at the start of the summer and it’s all about who they bring in, and that’s how good they’re going to be. That’s not really how it works.”

That Maxwell has a point. On average, more than half of last season’s minutes were played by squad members who are still present – for Championship clubs, it’s nearly two-thirds – and they haven’t hung about just to hold the new signings’ washbags. Not only that, but some of those valuable assets (the footballers, not the washbags) will be hot property, prompting fans to fret from May through August that their beloved star player is on his way out.

Believe it or not, everyone’s on this food chain together, and I find that fascinating. Leeds can spend more than Rotherham, who can spend more than Grimsby; however, every Football League club is at the mercy of a richer or ‘bigger’ club. Some are predators, feasting on the small fry, but they themselves are prey to Premier League hunters. While I wouldn’t expect Leeds supporters’ angst to have garnered much sympathy in Morecambe this summer, they are subject to the same market forces and sit, if not in the same boat, then in a bigger boat caught in the same maelstrom. 

So, forget for now who ‘won the transfer window’. I’m asking: who successfully held onto the players they wanted to keep? Which clubs won the anti-transfer window?

Helping me to answer that are these wonderful graphics from Ben Mayhew of Experimental 3-6-1, now available on Substack! You can be sure of good content from Ben - his squad retention pie charts are neat, lively and easy to understand – everything, essentially, that I am not.

Let’s dive in.

Championship

I’ll start with Leeds, not because I’m scared their fans might throw poo at me otherwise, but because their player sales were so high-profile. It isn’t hard to see the big chunk of minutes removed from last term’s team: Messrs Summerville, Rutter, Gray and Kamara sliced out of the pie as if by a greedy, rude houseguest. But, without wanting to gloss over the departures of several brilliant players… it’s not too bad otherwise, is it? That gave Leeds four positions to fill – difficult, no doubt, yet also a clear, identifiable issue that could be fixed with targeted recruitment, resulting in the arrivals of Largie Ramazani, Manor Solomon, Jayden Bogle and Ao Tanaka.