Top sports lawyer Daniel Geey explains everything you want to know about the transfer window.
Why do clubs leave major investment decisions in personnel to the last minute? Geey points out that they may be the culmination of weeks and months of planning.
Top sports lawyer Daniel Geey explains everything you want to know about the transfer window.
Why do clubs leave major investment decisions in personnel to the last minute? Geey points out that they may be the culmination of weeks and months of planning.
Not in every case, though. Some clubs have been criticised for poor strategies this summer and it is always possible for panic to set in during the last hours or, as we have seen in the case of Manchester United, for deals to fall through because the paperwork is not ready.
Some consider that the record fee for a teenager that Manchester United paid for Anthony Martial is a sign of panic. There is no doubt that he is a real talent, what remains to be seen is how quickly he can adapt to the Premier League.
The De Gea fiasco has led to claim and counter claim from United and Real Madrid with the Spanish club claiming that the paperwork arrived two minutes too late.
There have been broader criticisms of United’s transfer policy. James Ducker writing in The Times argued that ”Old Trafford has been operating a revolving door transfer policy over the past 12 months as the club try to atone for inertia and errors in the transfer market in recent years’.
It could be seen as a broader symptom of the decline of the dominance that United enjoyed in the Ferguson years. Manchester City completed their substantial transfer activity early.