Premier League Transfer Window Analysis: Winners and Losers

Two days on from the window slamming shut, the Premier League still looks like it’s staggering out of a casino at dawn, chips gone, receipts missing, insisting it had a great time.

Who won? Who lost? Does that even mean anything any more when a bad £100m decision can be rinsed and recycled for £80m a year later? This was the summer when the Chelseafication of the market felt complete: fees detached from reality, mistakes cushioned by the knowledge that someone, somewhere, will pay silly money for your cast-offs.

You can’t really analyse a landscape where Chelsea drop £60m on Mykhailo Mudryk, watch him struggle, then banned, and still find a route to a possible profit within a year. But we’re going to try.

Back in the murky days of three weeks ago, before actual football rudely interrupted the theorising, there were 10 glaring problems across the division. The window’s done. The cheques are signed. How many of those holes were actually filled – and how many were just wallpapered over with cash?

Tottenham’s missing No 9

Tottenham first, because of course.

Did they solve the striker issue? Sort of. Not really. Maybe.

They brought in Savio, Omar Marmoush and Mudryk. They did not move on Dominic Solanke or Richarlison, both still circling Roberto De Zerbi with a distinctly frosty energy.

De Zerbi has already set Savio a double-figure goals target, and it’s clear Spurs are going for a goals-by-committee approach. Marmoush looks a sharp piece of business, a forward who decided battling Erling Haaland for minutes at Manchester City was a fool’s errand and left to actually play football.

But he isn’t a classic No 9 either. The lack of serious links to one – the other attacking targets that slipped away were Cody Gakpo and Iliman Ndiaye – hints that De Zerbi simply doesn’t want that profile. And he got almost everything he did want.

Two league games in, Spurs haven’t scored. They haven’t really looked like scoring. If this is going to be a fluid, interchangeable, goals-from-everywhere attack, it needs to start looking like one very quickly, or this expensively assembled new era risks turning into yet another long, joyless slog.

Manchester City’s midfield panic

This one began as a classic post-Community Shield overreaction. Cardiff, a glorified friendly, a slightly odd midfield pairing of Elliott Anderson and Mateo Kovacic, and suddenly City looked… ordinary.

City did what City do now. They hurled another nine-figure fee at the issue and dragged Enzo Fernandez out of Chelsea.

Fernandez had already painted himself as a Premier League pantomime villain with his World Cup antics. Now he’s jumped from one of the league’s great money pits to the other, becoming the face of a summer where restraint felt like an outdated concept. He arrives with a target on his back, and there will be no shortage of people desperate to see him – and City – fall flat, even if it means Anderson’s development gets trampled in the process.

Manchester United’s creaking back line

United did the hard work in midfield earlier in the summer. The real gamble came at the back.

They chose to trust an ageing, fragile defence that had already shown signs of collapse. Two games in, two promoted sides have helped themselves to four goals, against a back line that four years ago was conceding four at Brentford.

The schedule is about to turn brutal, with two-game weeks piling up. A huge amount now rests on Luke Shaw staying fit and reliable for months on end. That is not a comfortable place for a club of United’s size to be.

Liverpool’s fitness – and finances

While the spotlight stayed locked on City, Chelsea and Spurs, Liverpool quietly ended up with the biggest net spend of the lot. And still emerged with a squad that doesn’t obviously look stronger than last season’s.

Bradley Barcola is a dazzling, wildly expensive addition to the forward line, but Liverpool already had a collection of dazzling, wildly expensive attackers who have yet to fully click. At least one of last summer’s big bets still needs to explode if this is going to be more than just another reshuffle.

On the fitness front, the evidence is muddy. Two games, two 2-2 draws, two late equalisers. You can argue that’s a sign of legs and resilience. Or you can remember that a year ago they were scoring late winners that turned out to be a smokescreen for deeper problems.

Maybe it’s coincidence. Maybe it’s pattern. Or maybe it’s just stuff that happened in August and will mean absolutely nothing by May.

Chelsea finally sort the goalkeeper… and open another hole

At last, something simple.

Chelsea needed a goalkeeper. Everyone could see it before a ball was kicked. Robert Sanchez’s first outing underlined it in thick black marker. Then they went and signed Emi Martinez.

No debate there. Martinez is better than Sanchez. Everyone can agree on that, which in this window feels like a minor miracle.

Of course, this is Chelsea 2026, so fixing one problem just uncovers another. Fernandez has gone without a like-for-like replacement, leaving midfield suddenly thin. The lack of European football helps; they can probably stumble through to January with Moises Caicedo as the constant and a rotating support act of Romeo Lavia, Valentin Barco and Reece James patching around him.

Or they can dive into the Free Agent Lucky Dip, which is always good for chaos. Given Spurs’ fondness for Chelsea’s discarded toys, there would be a certain dark comedy in Chelsea turning to Yves Bissouma or, for the full banter option, Tanguy Ndombele as a warm body to plug a gap until the next £80m solution appears.

Aston Villa rip out their spine and start again

Villa’s midfield looked a worry. Then, almost quietly, Leon Goretzka walked through the door on a free after leaving Bayern Munich.

It was late-August business that barely registered amid the noise, but could age very well once people clock that it actually happened.

Villa have lived another summer of churn, forced to juggle that permanent sense of grievance they carry on both shoulders with the need to keep evolving. Martinez, Konsa, Tielemans, Rogers, Watkins – so much of the spine that underpinned their rise has gone.

Even so, the recruitment looks smart across the pitch. Their goalless, pointless start feels more like an early-season wobble than a looming crisis. There are other clubs whose zero points look far more ominous.

Newcastle’s Newcastle problem that never was

Forget the hand-wringing about Newcastle losing their edge or identity. For now, it looks misplaced.

Matthias Jaissle has walked in and, on the early evidence, might just be the real deal. Four points from Liverpool and Tottenham suggest a team that hasn’t lost its nerve.

The only nagging doubt is what those results actually say about Liverpool and Spurs rather than Newcastle. The next few weeks, starting with Bournemouth, a club without the circus attached, should tell us more.

Fulham roll the dice on Arbeloa

At Fulham, the concern was always the man in the dugout.

Alvaro Arbeloa – the Temu version of Xabi Alonso – has already surged to the front of the Sack Race, despite Tottenham’s own issues and the fact that Mr Marinakis has gone weeks without firing anyone and must be getting twitchy.

You can see why both Fulham and Marco Silva felt it might be time to part. But they were one of those rare Premier League fits that just worked: right manager, right club, right moment.

That’s part of why Arbeloa always felt like the flimsiest of the new managerial appointments this season. It’s a big job, a tricky squad, and he’s already under the harshest kind of scrutiny.

Coventry’s lingering Sky Bet smell

Coventry arrived in the Premier League with a whiff they couldn’t quite shake. They still smell of Sky Bet.

The defeat to Hull has made the upcoming fixture list look nasty. Manchester City, Brighton, Forest and Newcastle in the next month could leave them adrift before the traditional October tonic: a trip to Dr Tottenham.

The most telling detail in all of this might not be the mega-deals at the top, but what Coventry have had to do just to look vaguely competitive. £150m spent, and the end result is a squad that, at best, resembles Championship Deluxe.

De-Championshiping a promoted side has never been harder. Or more expensive.

Crystal Palace and the Chelsea carousel

Palace’s defence looked fragile before the season started. Two defeats later, including a mauling by a Manchester City side still finding its rhythm, and the alarm bells are still ringing.

They’ve turned, like so many others, to Chelsea. Axel Disasi arrives on loan, because at this point it feels like a contractual obligation that every Premier League club must borrow him at some stage. Somewhere, there’s probably a rota.

Then there’s Honest Ahanor. He’s on loan from Atalanta, but only technically. In reality, he’s a Chelsea player-in-waiting, due at Stamford Bridge next summer. It’s a deal that openly sprints through a loophole, waves at the rulebook and makes you feel faintly queasy. The fact the player is literally called ‘Honest’ only adds to the absurdity.

To complete the Chelsea flavour, Ben Chilwell is back, returning to Selhurst Park after a previous loan spell, this time via Strasbourg. And here’s the thing: clubs only sign an injured Ben Chilwell on deadline day when they are truly, deeply worried.

The window’s closed. The money’s gone. The squads are set, or at least frozen until January. Now we find out which of these frantic fixes were solutions – and which were just very expensive ways of delaying the inevitable.