The January transfer window
What is a transfer window and why did I refresh the same browser tab 55 times over the last week?
The answer to the second question is because I have bad impulse control.
Explaining the transfer window is a slightly longer answer but can be shortened: it’s the designated times of year when teams are allowed to buy and sell players.
The main transfer window is from June through August, which for every soccer team not based in the United States constitutes the offseason.
Of all the ways in which American soccer insists on being different from every other country, I would say the three leading contenders for silliest application are, in order:
Not having a relegation/promotion structure.
Running their season on an entirely different schedule from the rest of the world, starting in March and going into December.
Calling it soccer, instead of football.
But this isn’t about ownership greed, again.
Not exactly.
It’s about ownership magnanimity, kind of.
The transfer window. When European soccer teams pay out unfathomable sums to other teams for the rights to acquire the contracts which allow them to pay new players unfathomable sums in monthly wages.
Conducting the main transfer window in the summer months is logical. The offseason is a time for a club’s coaches and sporting directors to address roster weaknesses, to add depth and consider tactical adjustments that may be made going into the following season. It is a time to take stock and try to continue pushing a project forward towards some idealized future.
The January transfer window, then, is for teams to panic.
Most European leagues have their midway point at the turn of the calendar year. Half of this season’s Premier League games were contested in 2024 and the other half in 2025. So then the January transfer window is the time for teams to assess where they currently stand in the league and then panic. Newly bought players will be given no preseason to get up to speed with the team’s tactics or their teammates’ playing styles and will be expected to contribute some significant improvement in team performance.
Just to clarify a quick technicality: the January transfer window actually closed yesterday, on February 3rd. I don’t know who decided the 31 days of January weren’t quite enough, that those extra few February days would make a difference, but that’s life in the fast lane.
But even with those few extra days, the January transfer window is still just one-third as long as the summer window. Those teams who rush through this abbreviated window have often suffered from a rash of midseason injuries or else have so underperformed for the first half of the year that the manager and sporting director and maybe club ownership are worried about what will happen if they don’t bring in that striker who can level them up.
And on the other side of the equation is that teams selling players in January know that the buyer is desperate and hoping to acquire a player who will contribute some significant improvement in team performance.
So usually there’s a premium attached to January transfers.
All of which is to say that Arsenal did very little in this year’s January transfer window.
Which is to say that I’m a little disappointed Arsenal didn’t bring in a striker. But also I’m very pleased that they didn’t concede to the pressure of so many thousands of fans who have been complaining into their computers about how the team needs a new striker and needs him now, in January, no matter what premium was being charged.
A team has to have a plan going into January or else their transfer activity in the present can negatively impact their performance years from now.
I realize now that you and I haven’t spent much time talking about the buying and selling of players in terms of the economics of running a soccer team. We will do that, I promise we’ll do that, that is in fact one of the most interesting aspects of the sport. I’ll tell you about Ajax and Dortmund and Real Madrid and the different models that clubs of various sizes employ to balance the buying and selling of players as it relates to the sustainability of their club.
And I don’t necessarily know if four-time defending Premier League champions Manchester City are desperate. Maybe they have a plan. But they are currently in fifth place in the league. They have looked horrible in the Champions League. They did recently get embarrassed by Arsenal to the tune of a 5-1 hammering. And they did spend a cumulative £172 million for four players over the January window.
And that’s not to say that teams don’t sometimes pay a premium for players during the summer transfer window, too.
Two years ago (and with what I believe to be very little desperation) Arsenal paid £105 million for one player. Declan Rice is a central midfielder whose name I have mentioned exactly once in the twenty plus notes I’ve written you, and even in that instance it was just to mention that Arsenal paid £105 million for him. But that’s kind of the economics of modern soccer, because Declan Rice might not be flashy enough to get his name written into missives between uncles and nephews, but he is absolutely one of the best central midfielders in the world. His transfer was part of an overarching plan, it was facilitated through the lens of building the future of the club and he has been very much worth the price tag.
Maybe we’ll talk about Declan Rice later.
For now Arsenal will go into the final four months of the season with an entirely unchanged squad to the one that has carried them this far.
Arsenal sit in second place in the Premier League, but the gap to Liverpool in first is significant. The easy thing would be to buy a player or two and hope their influence alone might erase that gap. If nothing else their arrival would assuage a fanbase who desperately want to win now. But in this case Arsenal looked at the January transfer market and maybe they made some inquiries and in the end decided to trust that the team as it has been assembled over recent years is good enough for now, is worth being patient with.
Arsenal will try to close the gap on Liverpool, will continue pushing for the other trophies still available to them, but will otherwise keep an eye towards next season and the season after that.
It’s important to have good impulse control, if you’re going to run a soccer team.