January transfer window roundup

The January transfer window is in full flow across Europe, as the biggest clubs in the world buy and sell players to sort out their title challenges for the back half of the campaign. Elsewhere, strugglers at the bottom of their respective leagues seek the player to patch the hole in their sinking ship with relegation looming. Let’s have a look at a pair of key moves that have taken place thus far.  

Chelsea have signed Portuguese Atletico de Madrid flop João Felix on a six month loan for €11 million. I’ll keep this one brief: the fee is outrageous, and this move looks sure to fall flat. Felix was sent off just 13 minutes into his debut, in which Chelsea lost 2-1 to London Rivals Fulham. He has since received a three game ban, meaning that he will now miss three weeks’ worth of league action after being signed to play in only 19 total league games anyway.  

This is not to mention the fact that he simply does not fit the system Chelsea want to play. Manager Graham Potter prefers a very fluid, defensively hard-working side. But Felix is not that type of player. He wants the ball at his feet at all times, and has been ridiculed by Atletico fans for his defensive workrate. I simply cannot see Potter preferring him to the likes of Mason Mount, who plays the same position.  

That’s the other thing—Chelsea already have a number of players just like him: dynamic, fluid on the ball, and lazy in defense. Mount may run his socks off, but if Chelsea want a lazier version, then look to Raheem Sterling, Christian Pulisic, or even Connor Gallagher, who is just a worse version of Mount in every way. It’s another miss by the Blues in the transfer market.  

This one is a head scratcher. United need a true striker as Cristiano Ronaldo has now left for the Saudi league, but to pick up a Burnley player on loan in Turkey is not quite a move their fans will be thrilled with. He does have pedigree historically, having scored a number of big goals for Wolfsburg in the Bundesliga during their most successful run in years back around 2019.  

He has been relatively successful in Turkey as well so far this season with Besiktas, but that is only masking the really troubling portion of his career that happened in-between: that ill-fated spell at Burnley. Signed in January 2022, he scored only a pair of goals in half of a league season as Burnley got relegated for the first time in six years, seeing manager Sean Dyche lose his job in the process. He was also poor at the World Cup for the Netherlands, quite frankly (though that is a matter of opinion).  

It remains to be seen if Weghorst’s second spell in the Premier League will be more fruitful than his first; United fans will sure hope so.