What An Earlier EPL Transfer Deadline Means
Maximum Chaos
Arsene Wenger has been a strong advocate for either abolishing the Transfer Window Deadline all together or shutting it down before the season starts. It looks like he’ll finally get his wish next year while he is still (regrettably) with Arsenal. Earlier this week, the PL clubs have voted to change the Transfer Window Deadline to the Thursday before the Premier League kicks off. This means that next year, the actual deadline will be Thursday, August 9, 2018 at 17:00PM whatever time England uses. So what does this mean?
If we trace Arsene’s side of the argument, he actually makes a good point. Teams spend a lot of summer assessing their needs, but never in a hurry to actually make moves. This leads to an opening three weeks that seem more like a scrimmage and a “grace period” that lets teams tinker and figure out what improvements they may need down the road.
Moving up the transfer deadline will eliminate this. You would have to think about team building holistically and build before the seasons starts. You can no longer use an excuse such as “we’re not done spending yet” as a get out of jail free card if your summer doesn’t go according to plan. It would also avoid panic and over-reaction buys such as offering in excess of 90mil for Thomas Lemar, who I don’t doubt is great, but is not the defensive midfielder Arsenal have needed for about a decade since Patrick Viera’s departure.
A tighter transfer window will also force clubs to establish their tactics and drill them ahead of the seasons, making sure that teams have an added element of focus during training sessions. Folding in last minute signings would be cumbersome right before kick-off and without the luxury of international break to figure out where and how they fit. Overall, the move to an earlier deadline will help streamline the transfer process out of the gate, leading (hopefully) to a higher quality of team play as the seasons starts.
Of course, there are flip side arguments. One of which is that the current deadline allows teams to adjust. Having two or three games where you basically transition your strategy from “on-paper” to “irl” helps you uncover blind spots and positional shallowness across your XI. The ability to pivot once your original strategy doesn’t work is what makes the best managers and leaders, just ask Napoleon if he thinks he should have turned around instead of trying to invade Russia in the winter.
Sure, teams should know what their needs are early on in the process (for list of exceptions see FC, Arsenal). That’s why Pep Guardiola spent the first month stockpiling full-backs like we were about to hit a deficit at the position. Unfortunately, not everything goes according to plan, sometimes injuries derail even the best laid plans. Sometimes, the player you’ve acquired doesn’t turn out to be quite the stud your scouts said he would. Or maybe they’re so good you can afford to offload positional overstock. Having the Deadline extend into the first three match-days allows teams and managers to transition from R&D to release on the fly and beta test their strategy as they go.
More importantly, the later Deadline acts as safeguard against other clubs poaching your players and leaving you defenseless. With transfer windows in Europe open later (Spain is already one day behind the EPL), outside clubs can come in and poach your talent without you having the ability to find a suitable replacement. Imagine Coutinho managed to force his move to Barcelona through and Liverpool were left holding the bag? Of course there is an option of “not selling” but players in soccer wield more autonomy than at most other clubs and when Barcelona comes a-calling it’s a fairly difficult proposition to say no to.
This could lead to clubs overstocking on positions and players, giving out huge chunks of salary as precautionary measures in case your star decides to leave for more Spanish or Italian pastures in the event of oh-let’s-say a slow start to your newly minted campaign. Clubs would buy unnecessary stop-gaps at certain positions to account for possibility of someone leaving after the transfer window closes.
There is no easy solution to how the EPL should handle this, but it seems that they at least unanimously agree that managers should have more urgency in the summer. Now we have to wait a full year to see how it works.
