5 summer transfer takes revisited

Sometimes it’s nice to go back through some things you said about players in the summer time and see how they are doing. Some of these were fairly nuanced, and some of them were more judgments about the long-term sensibility of the transfer and opportunity cost, and we won’t know the real outcome for years. But it’s still nice to check back regularly and see how the predictions you made are doing.

Disclaimer: I have gotten MANY transfers right and wrong in my career. These were just a few of the ones I remembered us having fairly high profile takes on, and I wanted to check back to see how player production looked as we head into the Christmas season.

Example 1: Joao Neves
Price: €60M to PSG
Summer Taek: He’s real good. Physical presence is fairly small. PSG bought him for under his value considering every big team’s needs at this position, but given the agent, who knows what the actual “deal” is.

Definitely doing what it said on the tin at age 20, though it’s about the same quality league and in a super team.

Example 2: Yankuba Minteh
Price: £30M to Brighton
Summer Taek: Newcastle aren’t actually going to sell him, right? That would be crazy. Oh wait, they did. To Brighton. Yup, crazy.

Has had a couple of knocks, but they believe in him enough to give him starter minutes when healthy, and he’s already producing.

Example 3: Pedro Neto
Price: £50M to Chelsea
Summer Taek: I don’t think he’s particularly impressive as a player, but the HUGE red flag here is the injury history and types of injuries he’s had.

I’ve watched a lot of Chelsea this season and I thought this would be a bit better. This is not production you spend 50M on near peak age. But we knew that already.

Every Chelsea fan should drink to his health this holiday season.

Example 4: Scott McTominay
Price: £25M to Napoli
Summer Taek: This seems bad. Why would one do this? Do they know they could just not do this? Despite regular agent chatter, they are only competing against themselves in the transfer market.

Someone is going to try and “scoreboard!” by pointing to the fact that Napoli are 2nd in the table, but this output could be basically any average random player and the results on Napoli’s production would be the same.

Example 5: Joshua Zirkzee
Price: £35M
Summer Taek: It’s weird to sign a striker that basically doesn’t shoot. Bologna played a strange style, so maybe he’ll be better with different tactics. OTOH United need warm bodies, and Zirkzee definitely has the physical profile to succeed in the Premier League. I don’t hate this deal, even if I can’t figure out who was fighting for it outside of his agent.

This is functional, and probably as good as I expected given everything that’s happened at United so far, crossed with the media take on his performances.

—TK

If you enjoyed this newsletter, we’d appreciate it if you would forward it to a friend. If you’re that friend, welcome! You can subscribe to The Transfer Flow here. We also have a podcast where we go in depth on transfer news and rumours every week. We’re on YouTube here, and you can subscribe on Apple Podcasts or Spotify by searching for “The Transfer Flow Podcast.”