Deadline Day Madness is Upon Us!

Normally, the Monday column is a roundup of what happened this weekend in the Premier League. It’s a collection of what we, as professional football watchers, have seen from the matches, and also delves intro trends, weirdness, and provides easy links to all the goal highlight videos from the winners.

HOWEVER… it’s not normally transfer deadline day, which it is today, and there are SOME THINGS TO REPORT. These are as up-to-date as we could make them for our publishing deadline of 2pm UK time. Expect a lot more throughout the next few weeks, including one of the favourite features we have ever done on TTF - Transfer Grades.

What kind of window has it been thus far? Pretty bloody crazy! One filled with big fees, bigger drama, and a lot of asses hanging in the window over prices paid for less-than-ready-for-primetime players.

If some of these don’t work out, we’re going to need A LOT more popcorn.

• Liverpool appear to have finally gotten Alexander Isak over the line, probably for a British record £125M fee.

• This was made possible after Newcastle secured the services of Nick Woltemade from Stuttgart for approximately £69M over the weekend. Nice!

• And Newcastle also [MAYBE] got Yoane Wissa across the line in a £50M+5 deal. Brentford had been briefing the player as highly unlikely to be sold all summer, which presumably means Newcastle met their valuation AND the Bees have incomings to report too. Maybe someone like Dortmund’s Max Beier (exciting)? Or Reiss Nelson (derogatory)?!?

• Man City are allegedly doing medical exams on Donnarumma to solve their “James Trafford stops shots real good but the YIPS in passing are going to kill us” problem.

• Chelsea allegedly cancelled Nicolas Jackson’s €15M fee to Bayern Munich after Liam Delap pulled up with a hamstring injury over the weekend. This was after a broad media briefing to team reporters about why Jackson and Maresca had fallen out. Now said reporters seem fairly confused about what happens next there, and given it’s Chelsea, that kind of makes sense. As of midday the deal was reported as highly-likely to be back on due to Chelsea recalling Marc Guiu from a loan at Sunderland, but we shall see!

• In related news, there is this weirdo move: “Facundo Buonanotte has completed his loan move to Chelsea. Expected to be official mid-afternoon. No buy option.” No buy option? NO BUY OPTION?!? What are Chelsea even doing now?

• Barcelona are likely to keep Fermin Lopez now, as Chelsea’s recent interest has reverted to solving their striker situation.

• Kolo Muani to Spurs on loan has magically appeared in the feed. I am deeming this a desperation heave at the end of the quarter for Spurs, but a backup striker was needed and a backup striker was obtained. My faith that he’s any good is rock bottom, but Kim is probably hoping for a spicy Xavi Simons to Muani connection to appear.

• Aston Villa are trying to sign Harvey Elliott and Jadon Sancho, both on loan. Things were always kinda weird financially at Villa Park, but they definitely got weirder this summer.

• Emi Buendia and Emi Martinez are potentially both outbound from Villa, currently to parts unknown.

• Villa have also signed former Manchester United centreback Victor Lindelof to sit on the training table for the next two seasons. Past performance is no guarantee of future performance, but you know…

• Crystal Palace appear to be trying to find another CB, including Brighton’s Igor Julio, which would free Marc Guehi to move to Liverpool. We would say they should have taken the Newcastle money and run last summer, but Palace and their fans would probably point to a trophy and suggest that was worth the missing £35M or so.

• Nottingham Forest are allegedly in for Strasboug/BlueCo Financial Trading winger Dilane Bakwa. He was “age-adjusted a bit above average” in Ligue 1 last season, but he also played a lot, which is a nice bonus. His shot map looks like Omari Hutchinson’s (who Forest also signed), whose shot map in turn looks like Andros Townsend’s [derogatory], but who might be a good finisher anyway?

• Ajax attacker Brian Brobbey is on his way to Sunderland. Dutch colleague and collaborator Nikos Overheul is not impressed.

• Florentine Luis is completing a loan move to Burnley. We profiled him for a CL team some time back and thought he’d make it big, but that career has sadly gone off the rails. Maybe Burnley can resurrect it.

• Fulham fans are NOT happy with their window. Again. Which seems like a Tony Khan problem, but I’m sure there is plenty of blame to pass around.

• Antony’s on-off move from Manchester United to Betis (and only Betis) is now back on. I’m looking forward to actual details on that one, since it appears he may have taken a steep pay decrease to leave England.

• Erik ten Hag was sacked by Bayer Leverkusen this morning. The reasons given were “not being enough like Xabi Alonso” and “being way too much like Erik ten Hag.” I am absolutely a Fire Fast person, and when you realise it’s not working and it’s only going to get worse, you gotta cut the cord. Well done to Leverkusen for realising that as well.

  We will have a podcast on most of this stuff out in the next 24 hours and continue to unpack the late-window madness for as long as it takes us to understand it.

  —TK

If you enjoyed this newsletter, we’d appreciate it if you would forward it to a friend. If you’re that friend, welcome! You can subscribe to The Transfer Flow here. We also have a podcast where we go in depth on transfer news and rumours every week. We’re on YouTube here, and you can subscribe on Apple Podcasts or Spotify by searching for “The Transfer Flow Podcast.”