The January transfer window is always an over inflated load of tripe – exciting for fans and equally frustrating for football chairman and managers.
Andy Carroll at £35 million? Do me a favour. Who in there right mind thinks that Carroll is worth more than David Villa or Rooney? He obviously has huge raw talent, is fantastic in the air and certainly knows where’s the goal is, but what a burden and a price tag to put on his young aggressive shoulders.
Time will tell if he makes it big in the North West, but you sense the Kop won’t give him long to impress, especially as he is taking the place of Torres who sparkled early on in his Liverpool career but probably isn’t even in the top 10 strikers in the world right now, and he went for even more!
Anyway, what about Villa, Blues, Wolves and Albion, how have they performed over the transfer period?
I have rated our local team’s business out of 10 below and included a small video of what I consider to be their key signing.
Let’s start with Aston Villa. Not a tricky one this, Villa’s problem all season has been hitting the back of the net on a regular basis. And when you look at their forward options; Carew, Agbonlahor, Heskey and Delfouneso – it’s not difficult to work out why their top scorer only has six goals.
So they shipped Carew out to Stoke (a perfect fit) and managed to off-load the overrated Sidwell, who thankfully didn’t end up at Molineux. The football world were then shocked when they paid a reported £24 million for Darren Bent, who maybe slightly one dimensional, but who cares when he score bucketfuls of goals?
And now with the Carroll and Torres transfer dwarfing that for Bent, suddenly Villa look like they have a bargain.
Bent made an instant impact on his debut, scoring with one of his only touches against Man City, as Villa notched up an improbable victory. And with Bent’s help, Villa have dragged themselves out of the bottom three. Not that they were ever really serious contenders for the drop, although I’m sure that one of our other three local teams will be playing Championship football next season.
I would say that Villa did exactly what they needed in the transfer window, acting early and addressing the right area. 9/10.
Onto their city neighbours then. And again, like many struggling Premiership teams, Blues have struggled to find goals. So to address this they have brought in a couple of stella signings. Firstly in David Bentley, who if he can be arsed will turn out to be a massive player for them and Obafemi Martins who can run a bit hot and cold but certainly has pace and power and hit the ninth ever hardest recorded shot in football don’t you know. Ninth, wooo, I can hardly control my excitement.
They have also brought in cover for the unlucky Scott Dann by bringing Curtis Davies on board, a player that once cost Villa around £10 million.
Good business all round then. They haven’t brought in any bench warmers, but players who will definitely be vying for a first team place and Martins should net them a few goals before the end of the campaign. He had a great goal rate at Inter Milan and Newcastle, but went off the boil at Rubin Kazan, so it could take him a while to get up to full speed.
9/10 for Blues – you can’t argue that they have spent some serious dough in trying to ensure Premiership Survival.
For Albion’s performance in the window, see Wolves and for Wolves, see Albion. Carlos Vela is a good young player, perhaps not in the class of his fellow countryman Javier Hernandez, probably reflected in the fact that Arsenal only paid around £125k for Vela, whereas Fergie shelled out millions for Javier Hernandez.
Vela has spent 5 years at Arsenal, playing only a handful of games, so he will be keen to impress his temporary employees. But the signing of Carlos doesn’t really cover the cracks. For me, the Baggies needed more experience to come in at the back, especially at full-back where Paul Konchesky would have fitted in nicely.
Like Wolves, they haven’t done enough in the window and they will be hoping that the combination of Vela and Odemwingie can score more goals than they concede. A measly 4 out of 10 for Albion.
And finally, onto my beloved Wolves. Jamie O’Hara is a great loan signing and a player I have admired for years and someone who I can see fitting in effortlessly into Mick’s hard working ethic. Amazingly the local paper seemed more interested in focusing on his girlfriend, Danielle Lloyd, which coincidentally was also my sister’s name until she got married.
Added to Jamie, Mick has also brought in the highly rated Adam Hammill from Barnsley and one for the future in Leigh Griffiths, a striker from Dundee for £150k.
Like Albion, I think Wolves could rue the lack of activity in the window. I know that Woodgate turned us down, and like Sidwell I can’t say I was that bothered about. But it’s the other end of the pitch where I think the club should have showed a bit of ambition by bringing back Robbie Keane or getting Ricardo Fuller from Stoke to net us a few more goals.
I really do hope we have enough to stay up, but like many Wolves fans, I am a tad worried. Mick McCarthy is undoubtedly the right man for the job but sometimes it feels that the board lack ambition to bring in a couple of big signings that could mean the difference between playing in the Prem or dropping down to the dreaded Championship again.
The stadium development looks gorgeous on paper, but the likes of Coventry and Middleborough can’t even get their new stadia 50% full and I’m sure a redeveloped Molineux would suffer the same fate if we were to be relegated.
Personally I think we should get the club established in the Premiership as the likes of Bolton, Fulham and Blackburn have done and then worry about the stadium developments.
Anyway, we didn’t really address the right areas in the transfer window, so I can only give Mick 5/10 for his efforts.
Thanks for reading the 2nd in a series of 10 Black Country Blogs.
Mines a pint of Banks’s Bitter and I’ll see you all again next week.
Cheers
Up the Wolves.
@Wolvesblogger 