If You Want To Buy In January, Be Very, Very Careful!

Tuesday night sees the January transfer deadline close. Transfer Deadline Day as it’s been come to known is the night in which anything can happen in the world of football.

It’s that one night of the year when Sky Sports News goes in overload hyping up anything and everything to do with the beautiful game, where even the slightest sniff of a deal will turn Jim White  into a raving lunatic.

Yes, money will be spent by clubs on good players, but millions will be spent on average players and lotsa wonga will be wasted on players brought in at the last minute as panic-buys.

Making sure the right player is brought into a club is vital. A foreign player may be playing but how can you be sure he will be the same in England, how can you be sure a home-based player can handle a move to a big club?

Can you be sure that an aging star would really give his all for a struggling side at the bottom and would you as a manager take a player right at the last minute if all your supposed transfer-targets cannot be dragged in.

Buying players mid-season can have it’s problems. At first both Patrice Evra and Nemanja Vidic struggled to adapt to the English game, but they turned the corner at the start of their full season and have become house-hold names whose value to the team has grown year upon year.

There are though some players who start off brilliantly only to fall back into their shells and disappear and disappoint. Arsene Wenger is great at buying un-knowns and making them into stars.

However he does not have the greatest record when it comes to buying so-called stars. Both Andrei Arshavin and Jose Antonio Reyes were signed as well-known talents.

Highly rated Spanish winger Reyes was signed from Sevilla in January 2004. He was quick, talented, had an eye for goal and was destined to become a house-hold name for many years to come.

Despite starting off well with a couple of goals against Chelsea, he struggled on the pitch and with rumours of homesickness rife, ended up going back to Spain two and a half seasons later. Fast forward to 2012, Reyes is now back at Sevilla.

Arshavin who is hardly ‘flavour of the month’ at the Emirates right now was well-known as an enigma of European football for several years before starring at Euro 2008 in a Russia side which reached the tournament’s semi-finals.

The former Zenit man started well scoring four at Anfield against Liverpool in the 08/09 title run-in, but has he really produced anything significant since. The simple answer to that is no and he will likely be sold before the start of next season.

To be brutally honest, you can throw Theo Walcott into the mix as a poor signing by Wenger. Yes, Walcott has talent but he has not been used properly by Wenger and the fact he's fallen behind Alex Oxlade-Chamberlain just says it all about the winger whose star has fallen.

There can be great deals made in January. But more often than not mid-season signings are overhyped and dissapoint, and that can be sometimes be even before a new signing has even played for their new club.

By Adam Dennehey @ADennehey87

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