#transfer deadline

[beingliverpool]

CHEERS!! Our Midfield Rebuild Is Complete!!

YNWA!! Ryan Gravenberch has become Liverpool’s fourth midfield signing of the summer after completing a €40m move from Bayern Munich... The 21-year-old found his opportunities limited in Germany with Thomas Tuchel admitting that, as a number eight, he was not suited for Bayern’s system. However, Klopp believes Gravenberch is suited to several midfield roles and capable of operating in both an attacking and defensive positions... He completes Liverpool’s midfield overhaul this summer following the arrivals of Alexis Mac Allister, Dominik Szoboszlai and Wataru Endo.

[turtlelightwood]

❤️ Once a Red, always a Red ❤️

[rrprojects]

🥺 He's all we had to remember him by

[thesportssoundoff]

EPL Transfer Deadline Day Spectacular (Refresh For Updates!)

-K.A. 

Woo! It’s been a while since I’ve done one of these, but since we last spoke and touched upon the wonderful world of transfers...

-takes a deep breath-

Arsenal:

Brought in Dani Ceballos on loan from Real Madrid to shore up their midfield, in hopes of getting classification to the Champions League.

Flirted with Wilfred Zaha and then ultimately ended up signing Nicholas Pepe for the same money,  ~£80 million with incentives, essentially acting like the girl at the bar who dances with you all night then goes home with another guy.

-Signed  Kiernan Tierney from Celtic from £25 milliom to fill their gap at Centreback. Also, they’ve somehow convinced David Luiz to leave Chelsea for £8 million, which is a steal. They’ve also let go of Koscileny to Bordeaux in Ligue 1 in France and signed William Saliba, another Centreback from St. Etienne also in Ligue 1 and sent him back on loan to the French club for a year for more seasoning.

-Let Aaron Ramsey go on a free transfer to Juventus, who sign players on free transfers like its their birthright.

Flirted with Phillipe Coutinho and then saw that deal fall through, because of course.

Have sold Alex Iwobi for ~ £40 million to Everton in the most awesome and desperate panic buy of the season. Great move there by Arsenal.

Chelsea:

Finally signed Mateo Kovacic permanently from Real Madrid to shore up their midfield.

Have brought in our lord and savior, Christian Pulisic from Borussia Dortmund to be the American Wunderkind we all know he is capable of being.

Found the reanimated corpse of Ross Barkley and have made him look like prime Frank Lampard.

Sold Eden Hazard in a move that made that portion of London cry.

Sold Alvaro Morata to Atletico Madrid for a bag of balls.

Loaned Danny Drinkwater to Burnley on a season-long loan only a coupe of years after paying £35 million for him. Regretting that now, aren’t we?

Crystal Palace:

Flirted with everyone regarding Wilifred Zaha, overpriced him as if he were Lionel Messi then watched all the big clubs shrug their shoulders and go elsewhere to buy someone just as good, if not slightly less talented. Arsenal and Everton both inquired about the Ivory Coast star and Crystal Palace got greedy. Now Zaha is refusing to train with Crystal Palace. Good way of fucking up morale, that.

Everton:

Signed Moise Kean from Juvenuts, bringing in a super-talented Striker to lessen the burn of not getting Zaha. Arguably better than Zaha and more fit for their squad. Will pair beautifully with Richarlison. Watch this team flourish this year. Calling it now.

Tried to work in and sneak in a deal for Franck Kessie from AC Milan in Serie A, but the deal fell through.

Panicked after not getting Zaha or Kessie and bought an overrated Alex Iwobi from Arsenal for a ridiculous  £40 million valuation. Are you kidding me?

Liverpool:

Have done absolutely nothing all transfer window to either the betterment or detriment of their team. 

Manchester City:

-Signed Rodri from Atletico Madrid for an absurd amount of money to be the eventual replacement for Fernandinho, a Defensive Midfield ace that everyone wanted, sure to shore up the link play leading up to the attack and clean up the messes before the likes of Zinchenko, Otamendi, Stones, Walker and others have to deal with it. Great signing.

Swapped Danilo for Joao Cancelo from Juventus because...well, they were bored and it seemed like good business? This was a cash dump.

Bid farewell to longtime captain Vincent Kompany as he left to Anderlecht in the Belgian League to be a player-coach.

Have flirted for the better parts of three months with Bayern Munich over the sale of Leroy Sane only to see Sane butcher his knee and tears his ACL in a glorified friendly, blowing up the potential move and putting Sane on the shelf for 6-12 months.

Manchester United:

Ho boy. Signed Harry Maguire and made him the most expensive defender ever for a sum of £80 million, much of which probably isn’t deserved. Signed Aaron Wan-Bissaka from Crystal Palace to shore up Right Back in a great bit of business. Signed Daniel James to play Right Wing, hoping that he’s more than just pace and a hopeful nostalgia-bit in which Manchester United is hoping to duplicate the magic of Ryan Giggs.

Have sold Romelo Lukaku to Inter Milan of Serie A after Lukaku refused to train with the first team in search of a big money move.

Flirted with and failed to bring in Bruno Fernandes from Sporting Lisbon.

Flirted with Paulo Dybala, made flirty faces at each other, slid into each others DMs, then Dybala told Manchester United he was a call girl and likes to get paid before they get in bed together. Manchester United balked and Dybala went back to Juventus where he will inevitable be stifled once again under Cristiano Ronaldo. Great life for Dybala, let me tell you.

Tottenham:

Sold Kiernan Trippier, got rid of Champions League legend Fernando Llorente, and said goodbye to worthless piece of crap, Vincent Janssen.

-Signed Tanguy Ndombele in the move of the transfer window, bringing him from Lyon in Ligue 1 to the London giants, placing Ndombele right in the middle of the park as a defensive midfielder, a position Spurs were sorely lacking in and needed to reinforce since the departure of Moussa Dembele.

Signed Jack Clarke, a young starlet in a good bit of business from Leeds before loaning him back out to Leeds in an act of good faith.

Signed Giovanni Lo Celso from Real Betis to boss the middle of the park next to Ndombele for a fee of £65 million.

Have seen Christian Eriksen flirt with everyone and their mother and then watch Eriksen get told in no uncertain terms that he simply isn’t good enough for the likes of the bigger teams in the continent. Great news for Tottenham, soul crushing for Eriksen.

Also flirted with Dyabla, also got the Girlfriend Experience from the Argentine before he demanded a Brinks truck full of money and Daniel Levy told him to kick rocks. Seemingly the deal was all but agreed and finalized before he decided to demand a sensational amount of money.

Signed Ryan Sessegnon from Fulham. A dominant and young British defender, he will definitely fill the wingback position and push Danny Rose to the bench. 

Tottenham is getting younger, adding skill and talent. I like it. Hell of a way to keep yourself at the top of the food chain. Ndombele, Lo Celso, Ndombele and Clarke is a hell of a transfer window.

Watford:

Signed Ismaila Sarr from Ligue 1 side, Stade Rennais for a club-record fee.

West Brom:

Hoping to get some goal-scoring punch, have secured the rights to Charlie Austin from Southampton on a 2-year deal with terms undisclosed.

Wolves:

Not done much, but were trying to work out a £26 million deal for the aforementioned Franck Kessie of Serie A giants, AC Milan, which fell through.

[thefalse9]

For Once, Arsenal Had Themselves A Successful Transfer Window

It could be said that over the years I have been astonishingly critical of Arsenal FC, their transfer policy and their seemingly unyielding ability to coast through a Transfer Window without properly spending a massive amount of allotted funds to turn the North London club in serious contender. Content to compete within the Top 4 of the English Premier League, but not break the bank in an effort to win the Premiership, the modus- operandi of an Arsene Wenger-managed squad was to qualify for the Champions League, place well within the Premier League and fill the coffers while not spending exorbitantly to do so.

Days past, that strategy may have work, but as a new influx of money has come into the world’s game; micro-states and oil oligarchs creating a new set of rules on how teams would be assembled and talent would be amassed, Arsenal was left behind in a bygone era.

Still, today that seems to has changed as Arsenal have completed their first transfer window in ages in where it seems they have locked up two players who will give the North London club something to cheer for, and more importantly? Some much need depth, credibility and hope.

This time last week Arsenal were in a seemingly more familiar status quo. They had lost their talisman, Alexis Sanchez to Manchester United in a move that made them look misguided at best and cheap and directionless at worst. Today, they’ve turned what was the agonizing realization that their best player had forced himself out of a club where he saw no future into the recruitment of a world-class striker with surgical precision in front of goal and a midfielder who thrives off creativity and the space to create and distribute from the middle of the pitch.

In Pierre- Emerick Aubameyang, Arsenal have secured one of the last remaining elite-level strikers who was not playing for an elite-level club; a world-class talent who will bring blistering pace and a knack for finding space in attack, a quality that the North London team has been lacking throughout the season.  It remains to be seen how Arsene Wenger will position Aubameyang and how he will deploy him. Whether as a Central Striker with Alexandre Lacazette and Henrikh Mkhitaryan on the wing as Mesut Ozil controls the middle of the pitch from his preferred Number 10 position, or  a tandem striker with Lacazette beside him much in the manner Dortmund deployed him with Robert Levandowski, it can be said that Aubameyang immediately becomes Arsenal’s second-best player upon arrival.

I say “second-best” because the more important piece of news to come from Highbury wasn’t the signing of Aubameyang, but rather the fact that Mesut Ozil pledged his future and his loyalty to the club long-term on the same day. With a massive new contract that is set to pay him  £350K a week,  Arsenal have avoided the doomsday scenario of allowing Ozil to walk for free when his contract would have expired at the end of the season. By ponying up the cash to keep the most creative player Arsenal has been able to sign in the past decade, Arsenal saved themselves from another scenario that would have played itself out much like the Alexis Sanchez melodrama of the past few weeks - a creative genius and a wonderkind of talent spurning the team because he felt that the club did not have the same passions, interests or dedication to success.

Most importantly however, is the fact that both of these deals may be signifying the dawn of a new era in Highbury. For so long, Arsenal has operated on austerity budgets and the implication that they wouldn’t be willing to spend in order to compete. In part, Wenger and his executive team in North London were justified; the legitimately couldn’t compete with the Manchester City and Chelsea FC of the world who were funded by the Prime Minister of the United Arab Emirates and an oil oligarch who is worth 7.6 billion, respectively.

Thing is? Wenger has always liked to downplay how big Arsenal actually are and how financial solvent the club actually is. The main thing holding back the club has always been their reluctance to openly spend the money they’re netting in profit from revenue. The reason for not being able to compete with economic betters has been a reluctance to dish out massive transfer fees and being insistent that they could compete through free-flowing attacking football and nothing else. The reality is that the game has changed, however, and the need to spend big in order to be successful is a real reality in today’s football.

When it comes to convincing players to stay at Arsenal, promises of beautiful and open-ended attacking football with perennial opportunities for Champions League football only gets you so far. Money talks and with the reluctance to open up the coffers, you will always lose out on talent to the likes of Manchester City, Chelsea FC and the proverbial mint that prints money from out underneath Ed  Woodward’s ass at Manchester United. 

Perhaps Arsenal have finally learned their lesson though. By blowing up their wage structure to secure Ozil and his other-worldly creative talents and by backing up the Brinks truck to pay for Aubameyang, perhaps Arsenal have finally decided to compete in a manner besides what they can provide between the touchlines. 

And for that reason? This was the most successful transfer window Arsenal FC has had in years.

[smilesleepandspeak]

Honestly mats hummels jumping off a balcony is such transfer deadline Mood™

[definitely44]

The fact that its transfer deadline day tomorrow and Man Utd aren't involved in anything dramatic is strangely disturbing

[thepotentialof2007]

i laughed