The amount of money that passes hands in football between clubs in this country is usually huge but this year has not been the case. With clubs such as Portsmouth and Crystal Palace facing financial uncertainties, the red half of manchester revealing huge debt and clubs as big as Liverpool being told they have to sell before they can buy it’s no wonder this January’s transfer window showed the smallest amount of transfer revenue spent by English clubs for 7 years in this window. Less than £30m was spent between the English clubs this window compared to last season’s £170m, but we have to remember that £90m of that was spent by man City alone, but the year before that saw sales of £150m.

These are quite surprising stats when you consider that we have manchester city and Chelsea who are two of the richest clubs in the world and manchester united, who despite their huge debt, did rake in £80m just a few months ago from the sale of Cristiano Ronaldo. City fans were probably looking forward to a big name or two but their major purchase was the £7m purchase of Adam Johnson from Boro. This last minute purchase proved to be the biggest in the transfer window. A lot of clubs instead decided to go with loans. Clubs can no longer afford to take financial risk in signing players mid season and some clubs could really benefit from not having the wage bill to pay for their fringe players. These two attributes has meant that the market for loaning boomed last month. I cannot remember the loan system being used so much (unless you count Norwich Citys over use of it last year anyway). Big loan movers included mido to West Ham, Nicky Shorey to Fulham and Jack Wilshire to Bolton. We also saw a few noticable free transfers in the form or Sol Campbell to Arsenal and maxi Rodriguez to Liverpool.

The recession, which we are gradually getting out of, might not be solely to blame on the lack of transfer activity this January, after all it’s very difficult to sign players mid season. Just ask Arsene Wenger who claimed he tried to sign David Villa, which had he been successful would have doubled the amount the spent by clubs in the window. I am not a fan of the transfer window and neither are a lot of managers but I feel this trend of using the Janurary transfer window mainly for loans could be a trend, especially in world cup years where first team football is more important to the players than their wages. Phillipe Senderos is a prime example of this with his move to Everton. Clubs will now have to make do with the players they have for the next few months and some may have seen this window as a success and others may rue not being able to sign those extra players their clubs need.