Premier League Transfer Window Analysis: Winners and Losers

Two days on from the close of the most deranged Premier League transfer window yet, the dust hasn’t so much settled as formed a permanent haze. The numbers stopped making sense weeks ago. The logic, if it ever existed, has long since left the building.

Who won? Who lost? Does that even mean anything in an era when a bad £100m decision can be half‑fixed a year later by someone else paying £80m for your mistake?

This was the summer when the Chelseafication of the market felt complete. Fees ballooned, contracts stretched, amortisation spreadsheets worked harder than most full-backs. It all carried the air of a housing bubble: whatever you buy, however recklessly, the value only ever seems to go up.

Chelsea paid £60m for Mykhailo Mudryk, watched him flounder, watched him get banned, and still managed to agree a deal that could see them turn a profit by this time next year. How do you apply reason to that? You don’t. You just try to keep up.

So let’s rewind three weeks, back to the pre-season jitters, when we picked out 10 glaring issues across the league. The questions were obvious. The answers, less so. Did anyone actually fix anything? Or has the whole division simply learned to live with its own absurdity?

Tottenham’s missing No 9

Tottenham’s search for a striker was supposed to be straightforward. It isn’t. It’s a shrug.

They brought in Savio, Omar Marmoush and Mudryk. They did not move on Dominic Solanke or Richarlison, the two forwards whose relationship with Roberto De Zerbi already feels combustible.

De Zerbi has publicly set Savio a double-figure goal target. That tells you plenty about the plan: goals by committee, not by one talismanic No 9. Marmoush looks a sharp pickup, a player who decided that fighting Erling Haaland for minutes at Manchester City was a waste of a career and has been vindicated so far.

But he isn’t a classic centre-forward either. The lack of serious links to a pure striker – with Cody Gakpo and Iliman Ndiaye the other attacking options who slipped through – hints that De Zerbi simply doesn’t want one. He asked for a lot this summer, and got almost all of it.

The problem? Two league games in, Spurs haven’t scored. They haven’t even looked especially close to scoring. For a club finally throwing its financial weight around again, the new-look attack needs to click quickly or this risks becoming another year of angst dressed up as a project.

Manchester City’s midfield panic

The Community Shield is a terrible barometer for anything, but City’s display in Cardiff still set off alarms. A midfield of Elliott Anderson and Mateo Kovacic looked like a puzzle with several missing pieces.

City reacted as City do now: by lobbing another nine-figure solution at the problem. Enzo Fernandez arrived from Chelsea, a £100m-plus answer to a question Pep Guardiola had barely finished asking.

Fernandez was already in villain territory for many after his World Cup antics. Becoming the emblem of this summer’s wild spending by swapping one financial superpower for another only deepened that status. He is now the face of a window that made even seasoned observers blink.

Plenty of people will be willing him – and City – to fall flat. If that happens, Anderson, once a popular under-the-radar figure, becomes collateral damage in a midfield arms race.

Manchester United’s creaking back line

Manchester United did their midfield surgery early. That was the easy bit. The gamble was leaving an ageing, creaking defence largely untouched.

The warning signs are already flashing. Two promoted teams have scored four times against them in the opening weeks, exposing familiar frailties in a back line that was collapsing at Brentford not so long ago.

The schedule will soon tighten. Two games a week, relentless travel, higher stakes. United are betting heavily on Luke Shaw staying fit and dependable for four straight months. It is a big stake to place on a player with his injury history, in a team that still looks one injury away from chaos at the back.

Liverpool’s fitness and the cost of standing still

While City, Chelsea and Spurs hogged the headlines for their excesses, Liverpool quietly finished the window with the biggest net spend of the lot. And yet their squad, on first glance, doesn’t feel dramatically improved.

Bradley Barcola is the headline addition: electric, expensive, and already one of the most watchable young forwards in Europe. But Liverpool still need last summer’s pricey forwards to finally ignite. If they don’t, Barcola’s arrival risks becoming another shiny distraction rather than a transformative piece.

On the fitness front, the picture is murky. Two games, two 2-2 draws, two late equalisers. You can read that either way. Resilience and legs to go the distance? Or a team that can’t control matches and is papering over cracks with late drama?

A year ago, Liverpool were nicking last-minute winners that disguised deeper problems. This time, the heroics are only saving points, not delivering them. Maybe it’s coincidence. Maybe it’s the start of another season where the numbers look fine until they suddenly don’t.

Chelsea finally fix the obvious problem… and open another

At least one issue was addressed with cold clarity. Chelsea’s goalkeeping situation was a problem before a ball was kicked. It became a full-blown emergency after the first game. Then it was fixed.

Emi Martinez in, Robert Sanchez out of the firing line. Whatever else people disagree on, this one’s simple: Martinez is an upgrade. A big one.

So of course, being Chelsea 2026, solving one problem immediately created another. Fernandez left without a like-for-like replacement in midfield. That leaves a hole in the middle of the pitch that no amount of creative accounting can disguise.

The lack of European football offers some cover. With fewer games, they can probably muddle through to January as long as Moises Caicedo stays fit. Around him, Romeo Lavia, Valentin Barco and Reece James can rotate and patch things up until the next £80m solution arrives.

If they want a cheaper fix, there’s always the free-agent carousel. The thought of Chelsea turning to Yves Bissouma, or the full comedy option of Tanguy Ndombele, just to make up the numbers until January, would be almost too on-brand. Particularly with Spurs’ long-standing habit of collecting Chelsea’s cast-offs.

Aston Villa rip up the spine and start again

Aston Villa’s summer felt like a controlled demolition. So much of the core that powered their rise – Martinez, Ezri Konsa, Youri Tielemans, Morgan Rogers, Ollie Watkins – has gone that the team almost needs reintroducing.

In the middle of that churn, they pulled off one of the window’s smartest under-the-radar deals. Leon Goretzka arrived on a free after leaving Bayern Munich, a move so quiet it almost slipped past unnoticed.

Goretzka brings experience, presence and a sense of order to a midfield that badly needed it. Villa have had to juggle their perpetual sense of grievance with the reality of major change, but the recruitment looks considered rather than chaotic.

They’ve started the season goalless and pointless, which is never a good look. Yet there’s a sense this is a wobble rather than a warning sign. Compared to some of the other clubs staring at zero points, Villa’s situation feels more like turbulence than a nosedive.

Newcastle remember who they are

So much for the anxiety around Newcastle being “too Newcastle”. For now, at least, that concern can be shelved.

Matthias Jaissle has walked in and looked entirely at home. Four points from Liverpool and Tottenham is a serious opening statement, the kind of start that calms nerves and sharpens ambitions.

There is a caveat. Those results might say more about Liverpool and Spurs than about Newcastle. We will learn more once they face a side with fewer identity crises and less chaos swirling around them.

Bournemouth away this weekend should help answer a few questions. Less theatre, more football.

Fulham’s uneasy reset

At Fulham, the tension sits in the dugout. Alvaro Arbeloa, dubbed the Temu version of Xabi Alonso, has already emerged as the early favourite in the Sack Race. That takes some doing with Tottenham wobbling and Evangelos Marinakis unusually restrained at Nottingham Forest.

Fulham and Marco Silva always looked like one of those rare perfect fits: right manager, right club, right time. The decision for both to move on is understandable, but it has left a void that Arbeloa has yet to fill with conviction.

Of all the new managerial faces in the division, his appointment felt the flimsiest. The squad still carries Silva’s fingerprints; the ideas now belong to someone else. That’s a delicate balance, and it already looks unstable.

Coventry’s Sky Bet hangover

Coventry still smell unmistakably of the Sky Bet Championship. The defeat to Hull only deepened that sense of unease, and their upcoming fixture list is brutal: Manchester City, Brighton, Forest and Newcastle in quick succession.

They could be drifting before the clocks change, relying on the traditional autumn visit to Dr Tottenham for relief.

The numbers tell their own story. Coventry have spent around £150m trying to shed their Championship skin, only to emerge with a squad that, at best, looks like Championship Deluxe. It is the sharpest illustration of how distorted the market has become: survival now costs a fortune, and even that only buys you a puncher’s chance.

Crystal Palace and the Chelsea carousel

Crystal Palace’s defence remains firmly in the danger zone. Two defeats, including a bruising night against a still half-formed Manchester City, have done little to ease the fears.

Their response has been to dip into the Chelsea pool. Again. Axel Disasi has arrived on loan, as he seemingly must at some point for every Premier League club. It feels like there’s a rota: your turn, lads.

They’ve also brought in Honest Ahanor, technically on loan from Atalanta but already committed to joining Chelsea next summer. It is a move that dances gleefully through a loophole, and the fact the player is literally called “Honest” only adds to the sense of farce.

Ben Chilwell is back too, returning from Strasbourg after a previous loan spell at Selhurst Park. Another Chelsea connection, another injured full-back arriving on deadline day. You don’t sign an injured Ben Chilwell at the last minute unless you’re slightly desperate. Palace look more than slightly.

The Chelsea flavour is everywhere. The anxiety is, too. And as the window closes on the most surreal spending spree yet, you’re left with one nagging thought: in a league this warped, how many of these problems have really been solved – and how many have just been kicked a very expensive few months down the road?