The end of the transfer window has been and gone, this article would of course have been posted earlier had the internet not died at 9pm, 3 hours short of the midnight closing of the Summer Transfer Window on September 1st 2008.
The end of last season ended on a massive high, Champions of England and Champions of Europe, a fantastic double and it goes without saying, a great achievement. This led many to speculate on this Summers transfers. Everyone thought they knew some certain transfers of course such as:
Didier Drogba to leave Chelsea.
Cristiano Ronaldo to Real Madrid.
Chelsea to spend massively.
Of course, none of those happened, which goes to show that not everything is guaranteed.
The other big transfer rumour and one of the most expected for the entire Summer was for Manchester United to sign another striker to help back up Wayne Rooney and Carlos Tevez, the two-pronged strike force we used for the entire season and a partnership where we were lucky that Tevez was never injured and Rooney only injured for short periods of time.
And we did. We signed another striker, Dimitar Berbatov from Tottenham Hotspur, a transfer which was originally rumoured to happen 12 months earlier, but eventually took place on September 1st, only minutes before the end of the transfer window. It was close. It was also an event that seldom happens. The last time we signed someone we needed last minute was Dwight Yorke in the 1990’s!
The negative news is that we signed Berbatov. Yes, he’s classy and has one of the finest first touches in the game, but he’s lazy, doesn’t run and quite simply doesn’t fit into our style of play – I can’t see it working playing him in the same team as Rooney and Tevez as a 3 man strike force, our team is catered for 4-4-2 and he doesn’t give you the work ethos that Rooney or Tevez do. The other fear is that, as a tall player, we’ll start launching the ball long, a tactic which will soon become predictable if you only have the one man to aim for. Personally I would rather we have really pushed the boat out for Sergio ‘Kun’ Aguero, a player much in the same vein as Ronaldo, Tevez and Rooney, in that he’s quick, fleet-footed and dynamic, he can mix up play, drop into the channels and beat people, all the things that our frontline can do and that made us so dangerous. The problem is that Berbatov won’t try to do that, nor do I believe he can do that. I can see me getting very angry with Berbatov over time if he doesn’t pull his socks up.
As if that wasn’t enough, we also managed to get rid of some chaff from the Man Utd squad, most notably Louis ‘Sick note’ Saha, a player who in 4 and a half years at the club managed only 42 Premier League starts and who our medical staff declared fit numerous times only for Saha himself to turn around and say he’s not mentally ready. We overpaid at £12m for him, thankfully my fears weren’t realised in having to pay another club to take him off our hands, and instead we simply gave him away to Everton.
We also managed to get rid of one of the dodgiest defenders I can ever remember at Man Utd, Mikael Silvestre, a player who’s ability with a football struck fear into the hearts of his own fans and whose tackling ability resulted in many free-kicks and penalties conceded. Thankfully those fears now belong to a title rival, Arsenal.
Lastly we got rid of Dong, a Chinese ‘striker’ so abysmal he could only have ever been purchased for shirt sales in the Far-East.
However, by far the biggest shock Worldwide was the takeover of Manchester City by ‘Abu Dhabi United’, a company that so far has claimed not to be related to the Arab Royal Family by the same name, but a company whose personal wealth dwarfs that of Chelski Billionaire, Roman Abramovich, with the company claiming a combined wealth of near enough £600 Billion and a willingness to buy whoever it takes for whatever it takes to become massively successful.
They made their wealth known by smashing the transfer record by signing Robinho from Real Madrid for £32.5m, getting the one man Chelsea coveted more than anyone else, a transfer that ex-Man Utd director and professional turncoat Kenyon messed up on massively, upsetting Real Madrid by selling Chelsea shirts with Robinho on before the transfer had officially taken place, resulting in Real Madrid refusing to sell to Chelsea (ha ha) and going to fellow/rival Manchester club, Manchester City (aww).
Either way, when Abramovich took over Chelsea people said Football would never be the same again. Now with the Arab families getting involved (with Dubai International rumoured to be interested in buying a club too) I think the time truly has come now. Teams who can afford anyone they want and pay whatever they want without even seeing a dent. Football clubs are now truly play things of the rich and famous and for me, that just means we will see even more and more of the World’s greatest players gracing our shores and playing in the English Premier League.
Platini must be seething, which is good because I personally can’t stand the racist asshole.
Now to see what happens in the January window…
