January Transfer Window Round-up
Not everyone will be used of the winter break in the Premier League and we have all missed the league action over the past ten days but that has been supplemented somewhat by the closing of the January transfer window. It's now or never for a whole host of teams and not many that are in the bottom three could lay claim to having spent over £80m in the past few weeks.
Newcastle United could be the next force in the Premier League and after signing Kieran Trippier, Chris Wood, Dan Burn and Bruno Guimaraes the Magpies will be favourites to stay up this season, although it will be fascinating to see how quickly the new players will adapt. Eddie Howe's side have also taken Matt Targett and Santiago Munoz on loan.
Manchester City were relatively quiet though they signed hot prospect Julian Alvarez for £14m from River Plate. The forward could be just what the champions need but we will have to wait until next season to find out given that the club have immediately loaned him back to the Argentine side for the rest of the season. Liverpool have not given up their title aspirations and have signed the quick and skilful winger Luis Diaz for almost £40m from Porto, Diaz was on Tottenham's radar before the Reds stepped in. As for Antonio Conte's side it was a Juventus double swoop with midfielder Rodrigo Bentacur coming for around £15m and Dejan Kulusevski joining on loan. Tottenham also offloaded a few players with loan deals including Bryan Gil to Sevilla but the big one for them was parting ways with Dele Alli after seven years.
Alli has joined Everton initially on a free transfer but with adds on that include how successful Everton are under Alli and how many games he ends up playing it is a fee that could rise to up to £40m. It has been an incredibly busy time for Everton in the past week and the big news for the Toffees is that Frank Lampard is the new manager after signing a two and a half year deal. Lampard was up against Vitor Pereira and Duncan Ferguson for the job. Pereira was never a fan favourite although club owner Farhad Moshiri favoured the Portuguese, he also favoured Rafa Benitez last year and look where that got him in the popularity stakes. Bowing to fan pressure and the fact that Lampard does talk a good talk the former Chelsea legend will be tasked with a huge job at the Toffees. However the club have brought in Alli as previously mentioned and have Donny van de Beek on loan from Manchester United until the end of the season. Let's not forget they also have Anwar El Ghazi also on loan from Aston Villa. One has to wonder about Duncan Ferguson who continually gets passed up for the managerial role. It looks like he may stay with the club in what would be a demoted role for him as he has lost the assistant managers job. Would it not be better for Ferguson to leave and try and gain experience elsewhere before one day coming back to Everton?
Perhaps the cheekiest side goes to West Ham who tried to buy Raphinha from Leeds and once that failed went after Kalvin Phillips from the same club. This is a Leeds side who could still be relegated and Phillips has missed a chunk of the campaign due to injury. In the end the Hammers ended up with no one as their main target Jesse Lingard fell through as Manchester United were not willing to sell or loan out the player to a potential top 4 rival.
Arsenal look to have rid themselves of Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang to Barcelona. The Gabon international leaving the Gunners two years ago would have been seen as a shock considering the goals he was scoring and the amount of times he rescued them. Though ever since signing a new contract last season he has been poor and has also fallen out with Mikel Arteta.
During the break a familiar face returned to the world of football in the form of Roy Hodgson. Hodgson is arguably the most experienced manager in world football currently and he has come out of retirement to take charge of Watford until the end of the season after Claudio Ranieri was sacked. Hodgson could be just the right person for the job but you'd feel the odds are stacked against the Hornets.
More Football Scandal
Clearly there is all to play for then and the last four months of the Premier League are going to be incredibly exciting but we cannot ignore some of the disappointments too and any football fan will have been devastated by some of the player actions this season. We won't tread over old news concerning the suspensions of Gylfi Sigurdsson and Benjamin Mendy who likely may never play football again. Now there is an emerging story involving Manchester United's Mason Greenwood, these are still early days but the 20 year old has been arrested and his career is also in the balance. This is a player that was hailed as the next best prospect at United from Sir Alex Ferguson, one has to wonder where has the respect gone from some so called professionals?
Africa Cup of Nations
It's odd that the horrific stampede after the Cameroon- Comoros game that left 8 people dead has had very little media attention. Imagine the fall out had this, God forbid happened at last summers European Championships? One has to question the legitimacy of the Africa Cup of Nations continuing, but continued it has. We have reached the semi-final stages and Burkino Faso will play Senegal while Egypt are pitted against Cameroon.
Africa Cup of Nations winner: Senegal 2.50, Cameroon 2.75, Egypt 4.00, Burkina Faso 11.00
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