Evaluating the Premier League's biggest transfers

The January transfer window is shut, which means you have to stop fantasizing about how your team can improve its fortunes. You’re stuck with these guys for the rest of the season.

Today, we’ve got a look at the biggest acquisitions in the Premier League. We’ll dive into some stuff from the continent later in the week, but Man City outspent that entire landmass by themselves.

Omar Marmoush, Nico Gonzalez, Abdukodir Khusanov and Vitor Reis — £173m to Manchester City

We’ll have a guest piece focusing on Manchester City’s spending spree next week, so we won’t go too much into detail on these guys. But I would like to quickly mention the deadline day signing of Nico Gonzalez, who fills the biggest hole they currently have in their lineup. He’s a DM who is good on the ball and not a complete turnstile defensively.

I am not sure a “Rodri Replacement” even exists, and anything close probably would have cost City in excess of £100m. But Gonzalez does Rodri-like things in a Rodri-like position. He is Rodri From AliExpress, which beats the hell out of not having anyone who can play that role.

Patrick Dorgu — £25m to Manchester United

There’s no radar included here because his positional switches mean it’s pretty jacked up. Dorgu has played an exactly equal amount of left back and right wing for Lecce, leading him to look like he is not getting enough shots an assists to be a good right winger, and not doing enough defending to be a good left back.

But Dorgu is an exceptional athlete with a good right foot and solid technical skills for an up-and-down wingback, making this a sensible signing for Man United and Ruben Amorim’s system. He is a bit of a lottery ticket, but at the price, that’s just fine. Antony or Leny Yoro-priced lottery tickets are pretty high risk; this one is quite a bit more reasonable.

Marcus Rashford, Marco Asensio and Axel Disasi — Loans to Aston Villa

The Boys talked quite a bit about this on the podcast. All 3 of these guys are some degree of damaged goods, and Villa are paying pretty insane wages to bring them to the club — something in the range of £500k per week combined. I’m skeptical about their ability to elevate the club, and think it might be money down the drain. But there are a couple of reasons for optimism.

One, Villa took a short-term risk with only short-term consequences. If all 3 of these guys stink and Villa are not remotely competitive for top 5… OK, reset and go again. You don’t attempt to purchase any of them, they’re off the books, and you try a different strategy. Sure, you’ve pissed away £10m, but you haven’t acquired a ball and chain either.

Two, as Ted mentioned on the pod, I also suspect Marco Asensio might be pretty good. He is not going to duplicate these numbers in the Premier League — any professional caliber footballer could put up stats playing low leverage Ligue 1 minutes for PSG — but a guy who can do this isn’t crap.

Mathys Tel and Kevin Danso — Loans to Tottenham Hotspur

Tel is another one we’ll have more analysis of later — expect a guest piece focused on him this week. Short analysis: Spurs have done very well to get him on a try before you buy deal where they pay a reasonable loan fee now, and have an option to purchase for £46m.

Their other signing is one we haven’t had a chance to discuss on this newsletter. Kevin Danso, who also joins on a loan-to-buy, though this one is obligatory for £20m. Danso looks like a solid all-rounder who can pass, carry, win aerials and tackle at an above-average level.

Stefanos Tzimas — £21m to Brighton

Tzimas has been every rumours roundup all season, linked to some of the biggest clubs in world football. But the team that eventually too the plunge is Brighton, the one stashing all the young attacking talent.

This was actually a three-part transfer. Nürnburg had to exercise their option to purchase Tzimas from PAOK, then sell him to Brighton, and then Brighton had to loan him back to Nürnburg for the rest of the season.

The 19-year-old has been crushing it in the 2. Bundesliga. He’s overperforming his xG by quite a bit, but this is still a lovely looking shot map, with a great combination of goals from through balls, headers, and passes into feet. Common Brighton transfer W.

Emmanuel Adgbadou and Marshall Munetsi — £33m to Wolves

Wolverhampton Wanderers are counting on the power of friendship to keep them in the Premier League. Emmanuel Adgbadou and Marshall Munetsi say they’re buds, and they’ve made the move to England together from Stade de Reims.

Munetsi is a pretty standard all-around DM who doesn’t do anything at an elite or poor level. He looks like a totally fine, though not particularly exciting signing to me. Agbadou, on the other hand, has some numbers that jump off the page. He’s been mentioned in this newsletter before, where I called out Wolves’ sporting director for being a no-doubter StatsBomb Column Sorter.

His numbers look pretty much the same, minus the dribbling, through about 400 minutes at Wolves. They might have snagged an absolute gem.

Romain Esse — £12m to Crystal Palace

In the summer, we might not think too much about this one. But in January, it’s actually one of the biggest fees paid for a permanent deal. Esse is a 19-year-old winger who’s been playing regularly in the Championship for the last couple of seasons, and it’s tough to get a read on him from his data profile. On first glance, this is not an obvious £12m player.

But there’s some context required. First is that he’s making a decent contribution to a team that’s staying up comfortably in the Championship as a teenager, which on its own suggests you’re a talented player. He’s also been playing for a very defensive Millwall team; his teammates’ attacking numbers do not look any better than his. And on top of that, he’s been excellent for England youth national teams, which is probably what got Palace interested.

Esse scored with his literal first touch in the Premier League, so that’s an early Palace scouting department 1, analytics 0. —KM

Bonus: Sverre Nypan to… nowhere

The Norwegian wonderkid announced over the weekend that he’d decided to start this season at Rosenborg and re-evaluate his options in the summer. He turned down offers from Arsenal, Aston Villa, and Man City Of Catalonia. Illegal streaming of the Norwegian league is about to bump up 500%.

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