In one of the least exciting summer transfer windows where the most excitement came from Barcelona and - oddly enough - Nottingham Forest, we saw some clubs reinforce their starting line-ups or bench, and in some cases offload secondary players. In this post, I will rate each club's activities.
Cheslea
Arrivals highlights:
Wesley Fofana
Marc Cucurella
Raheem Sterling
Kalidou Koulibaly
Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang
Carney Chukwuemeka
Departure highlights:
Timo Werner
Romelu Lukaku
Antonio Rüdiger
Andreas Christensen
There's something scary about getting a center back from Leicester for 80 million, but Fofana is a solid signing who I believe will improve a lot while learning from Thiago Silva and Koulibaly who in turn is another great signing as he will provide a great presence in Chelsea's backside. The two might not be an improvement over Antonio Rüdiger and Andreas Christensen but they're not worse either with Chukwuemeka being a great backup.
Marc Cucurella is a player you couldn't go wrong with as he is a player who acquired a lot of Premier League experience last season. Raheem Sterling's eagerness to be the MVP in his team will serve Chelsea and Aubameyang proved to be a reliable source of goals and threats, at least in the beginning.
Chelsea got rid of their main strikers, Werner and Lukaku, and their poor goal records. Whether it was the players' quality or Tuchel's tactics or a combination of bother, both strikers looked lost last season.
Players' value aside, every player who left was replaced.
My rating: 8.5/10
Liverpool
Arrivals highlights
Darwin Núñez
Fábio Carvalho
Arthur Melo
Departure highlights
Sadio Mané
Definitely the worst transfer market activity among the top six clubs. Liverpool brought one of the most exciting prospects in Núñez and Carvalho but none of them really provide an improvement over the departure of Sadio Mané. Liverpool's late awakening is also odd as it took the club so much time to realize their need for another midfielder to deal with their injury crisis and they did so by buying injury prone Arthur Melo.
My rating: 6/10. Although I feel that is generous as well.
Tottenham
Arrivals highlights:
Richarlison
Cristian Romero
Yves Bissouma
Ivan Perisic
Djed Spence
Departures highlights:
Steven Bergwijn
Cameron Carter-Vickers
Tanguy Ndombélé
Perhaps we could say that Tottenham's transfer window started last winter with the signing of Rodrigo Bentancur and Dejan Kulusevski with the latter becoming an unstoppable force under Conte. I doubt Conte will be missing any of the departed players either which makes Tottenham's transfer window senseable.
There isn't much to say here as even with Richarlison, Tottenham didn't exactly buy a team-changing start but their transfers did improve the team.
My rating: 7/10
Manchester City
Arrivals highlights
Erling Haaland
Kalvin Phillips
Manuel Akanji
Sergio Gómez
Julián Álvarez
Departure highlights
Raheem Sterling
Gabriel Jesus
Oleksandr Zinchenko
Fernandinho
The addition of Erling Haaland is really the only highlight you need to see from Manchester City as if you look at the rest you'd see direct replacements for each departing player.
Manchester City's second biggest accomplishment this summer is actually not listed above as it is keeping their Portuguese versatile player, Bernardo Silva. The only thing that would have made Manchester City's transfer window perfect is perhaps signing a star left-back and having Cancelo go back to his original position.
My rating: 9.5/10
Arsenal
Arrivals highlights
Gabriel Jesus
Oleksandr Zinchenko
Fábio Vieira
William Saliba (End of loan)
Departure
Bernd Leno
Nicolas Pépé
Alexandre Lacazette
Arsenal went into this transfer window knowing exactly what the club needs and either got it or refused to overpay to get it. The departure of Leno and Lacazette isn't surprising as Leno was playing second fiddle to Ramsdale and Lacazette was being replaced by one of the best drifting strikers in the world, Gabriel Jesus.
Saliba's end of loan added much-needed depth to the team's defensive line allowing it to be versatile when needed, like when Arsenal switched to 3 at the back against Fulham. Arsenal could have benefited from an extra midfielder. But, overall when you have 3 new starters on your team then you definitely improved.
My rating: 9/10
Manchester United
Arrivals highlights
Antony
Casemiro
Lisandro Martínez
Tyrell Malacia
Christian Eriksen
Departure highlights
Paul Pogba
Andreas Pereira
Eric Bailly
Nemanja Matić
Manchester United started their summer by getting rid of many names that are either collecting paychecks on the bench or are below the team's ambition. As far as departures, Manchester United have done a great job as the names left are good enough to feature in the team, even as substitutions or playing the occasional cup game.
In terms of arrivals, however, is where I begin to question Manchester United's plans as the club paid 238 million pounds for 5 players. The money isn't my issue, but the point is that Manchester United only seem like they bought a lot of players because of the money paid, but in reality, have bought 4-5 players that could raise the quality of the team.
Another issue is the signing of Casimiro looking like a panic buy as the player doesn't seem to be the style that could benefit Manchester United offensively, but it is something that could be worked around although we saw ten Hag deploying Eriksen deeper when attacking but we also saw how bad Manchester United can be under pressure and a player in Casimiro's position is usually the transition point.
Manchester United still look far from their target as they still lack a world-class striker and box-to-box midfielder as the current options lack what is required to fill in those roles, not to mention a right-back.
My rating: 7/10
In my opinion Tottenham and Arsenal did a great job this window! For ManU, the names are great but somehow they still need time to perform. I am interested to see if it will help them.
Exactly, Manchester United still look far from having that matches their fans' expectations/ambitiouns.