The closing of the summer transfer window provided one of the most exciting TV evenings of the year. Perhaps the most. Everyone thought Robinho was going to Chelsea and Berbatov was going to the new moneybags, Manchester City. At the last moment neither happened. Just as the BBC was announcing that Berbatov was going to City, Sky viewers could see him with Alex Ferguson and David Gill at Old Trafford.
The most interesting thing about this is the loss of nerve by the Premiership clubs. Of course, money's scarce, but the big drop could cost clubs tens of millions of pounds. And there's a lot of clubs down there, battling it out, only a few points apart. Big clubs like Tottenham and Newcastle as well as the less fancy clubs like Sunderland, Portsmouth, West Brom and Stoke. Go down now and you may take years to be back. Worse still, like Leicester and Leeds you may just keep falling, and before you know it you are in the old 3rd Division. There are seven or eight clubs in the last chance saloon. And for a club like Villa or Liverpool, one or two bad injuries could kill their season. Now that Liverpool have sold Keane, who's going to replace Torres if he gets hurt? Or at Villa, who's going to stand in for Gareth Barry? Man United had ten players injured before playing Tottenham in the FA Cup and after the first ten minutes you would hardly have known. Even Chelsea, with their big squad, are already hurting without Carvalho, Joe Cole and Essien, three really big players. So apart from Arsenal (perhaps -- there's still a question mark over the Arshavin deal as I write), none of the big clubs went for broke, and apart from Tottenham, none of the strugglers bet on their future. We'll see who's laughing in three months time.
Chelsea (Quaresma), Everton (Jo), Fulham (Dacourt, Gray), Newcastle (Taylor), Portsmouth (Basinas), Stoke (Camara), Sunderland (Davenport), Tottenham (Keane), West Brom (Menseguez, Mulumbu), Wigan (N'Zogbia)
Out: Chelsea (Smith, Tejera), Fulham (Leijer,Teymourian), Liverpool (Gulacsi, Hamill, Keane), Man City (Jo), Man Utd (Chester), Newcastle (N'Zogbia), Portsmouth (Hyland), Sunderland (Chopra), Tottenham (Pekhart), West Ham (Davenport), Wigan (Camara, Taylor)