Welcome to the last edition of Premier League transfer grades. If you missed any of the earlier pieces:

Part 1, featuring Arsenal

Part 2, featuring Chelsea

Part 3, featuring Liverpool

Today we’ve got:

First off, I would like to thank Manchester United for keeping things simple. Four transfers in and one of them a backup GK made for the easiest transfer evaluation of any team this window.

Baleba is good, but needs to learn how to become a better passer to be amongst the elite. At his age, I’m not actually sure that’s possible, but this is a far better price than United would have paid last summer for that privilege. They needed more midfield dynamism and he certainly has that.

Andrey Santos is already solid and shows a lot of promise. He’s not likely to be a fully dynamic midfielder like a Bruno Guimaraes or the profiles PSG seem to recruit, but he’s young, retains possession, and capable of a variety of useful jobs. They paid a reasonable price for a utility midfielder with upside.

Tielemans I am less excited about simply because I was only a moderate believer in mid-career Tielemans, and definitely a non-believer at this point. On the other hand, you know exactly what you are getting with him and he’s not bad, he’s just not particularly good at this point in his career either. Maybe he’ll flourish with more dynamic options around him at United. At the end of the day, he’s low risk, but a pretty low price in this midfielder economy. —TK

Ted: B+ | Kim: A- | Hayden: B

Casemiro and Sancho is a LOT of wages off the books. Hojlund was a nice exit obligation negotiated last year for a player who definitely was not good enough for the Premier League. —TK

Ted: C | Kim: C+ | Hayden: D

This is an unsettling window from United, in that it feels both sensible and competent. They needed to rebuild the midfield, and did so with some frugality, but got three necessary players at good prices in the end.

However, it comes alongside various changes at the club on the men’s and women’s sides that point to significant cost-cutting across all of the football operations, despite returning to the Champions League.

Overall grade: B

That is a lot of rebuild, and absolutely necessary as Newcastle enter their post-Eddie Howe era. More remarkably, I love most of these transfers. Pardo, Gonzalez, Bamba, Hornicek, and Steur are all good-to-great deals, and the exact opposite of what Newcastle have been doing in recent, more dysfunctional seasons.

In Pardo and Toure, they tried to ramp up their pace and creativity, and Pardo in particular definitely looks ready for prime time. Gonzalez was secondhand from City, good enough to be a happy PL player, but maybe not a top Champions League midfielder. He should be fine at Newcastle and this was a good price, though their midfield may still look regularly overmatched this season because while Bamba was tremendous at Monaco last season, he’s still really young.

Hornicek comes off two excellent seasons at Braga and is a number 1 GK for under £30m. Then you get Sean Steur, who is a literal child, but a top tier player for the future out of the Ajax academy that they have laid claim on for a reasonable price.

Toure feels like an overpay when you look at league adjustments, and Dedic is a pretty average right back at a higher fee to me, but overall this is a really strong window where the Magpies got younger and retooled their future at very reasonable transfer fees. —TK

Ted: A- | Kim: B+ | Hayden: B

Gordon was a little under his market value, but moved early, which Newcastle may have felt they needed in order to negotiate hard on Tonali and Guimaraes. Both Bruno and Gordon are big losses, but the fees recouped there were a huge factor in letting Newcastle have such an active, positive shopping window.

The whole Woltemade thing is a mess that may be impossible to clean up, but this regime didn’t create that problem, they just inherited it. —TK

Ted: A- | Kim: A | Hayden: A

With top players aging and angling to leave, Newcastle opted to rip off the band-aid and get the biggest fees they possibly could. It might cause some short-term pain, but long-term, it was undoubtedly the correct decision. We might not love all of their signings, but this is a competent window that gives Newcastle a good platform to build on going forward.

Overall grade: A-

After going crazy the last couple of years, this represents a bit of a transfer diet for Nottingham Forest. Unfortunately, I do not think they got good value with any of these transfers.

Delap is fit enough and works hard enough that he’ll never be truly useless, but paying top of market value for a guy whose production fell off a cliff the previous season is baffling. You’re supposed to get a discount when a striker goes from scoring 12 goals to scoring 1! How are you this bad at negotiating?

Diomande is an aerial monster and decent carrier, but he can’t pass. This is unlikely to be a problem at the center of a back 3, flanked by two decent passing defenders in Oliver Glasner’s system, but I am wondering why you’re paying £34m for a guy who can’t pass. Once again, a useful system fit, but at a higher price than they should be paying for this skillset.

Muñoz is an instant upgrade at RWB, but he’s expensive for a 30-year-old. Sa appears to have been a favor to the owner’s other club. Schlager is a decent depth signing.

This window sucks. —KM

Ted: C- | Kim: D | Hayden: B-

Hey, at least they got top of market value for Anderson, and forced City to pay it all up front instead of getting a bunch of incentives. Everything else here is a minor L. Getting Awoniyi, Carmo, Silva and Richards off the books at amortization break even or slightly better is fine, but all of those players initially cost more than they were sold for. —KM

Ted: B | Kim: C | Hayden: B+

Forest’s previous signings were good enough, and other teams are bad enough, that I don’t think they’re in a relegation battle this season. But this window gets them closer to that battle next season, rather than closer to Europe. Stinky.

Our tagline here is “we’ll tell you when your Director of Football should be fired.” We missed telling you ahead of time, but Forest have already fired him, and were right to do so.

Overall grade: C-

Over the last couple years, we (along with the rest of the world tbh) have been frequently critical of teams going nuts in the transfer market, either because they think they’re brilliant player traders or they’re just addicted to making signings. But a small handful of teams are mostly opting out of that game when they should be aggressive, and Sunderland are one such example.

Sunderland’s -0.36 xGD per 90 last season was relegation quality. It was worse than West Ham, and it was as bad as Spurs and Forest combined. This was not a good squad, and it needed upgrading. Additionally, with Sunderland qualifying for Europe, it probably needed more bodies.

Instead, the Black Cats mostly stood still. The transfers they did make are more future bets than players who can help them right now. Ahoka and Angulo are young players who are unlikely to make any immediate contribution, and Methalie is a toolsy wingback who had bad production last season. While I really like buying low on Fofana, who looked like he was in line for a move to a much bigger club for much more money before he picked up a serious ankle injury last season, he is still a guy coming off a serious ankle injury.

There are maybe 15-16 guys on this squad that I’d call solid Premier League/Europa League-level players? They needed 3 or 4 more prime age bodies. It’s looking possible that all 3 of the newly promoted sides (and Fulham?) are bad enough that they can get away with it, but Sunderland should have signed more players. —KM

Ted: B | Kim: C | Hayden: C-

At least they cleared out a lot of the Championship-level filler, and made a nice profit on Mayenda, despite him looking mid as hell. What on earth were Rennes thinking? —KM

Ted: B | Kim: B+ | Hayden: B+

It’s fine, but they better start planning for an aggressive window next summer.

Overall grade: C+

There is no truly egregious transfer on this list. All of them are some variety of “fine, I guess.” Justifiable given their level of production and Tottenham’s squad needs. But there’s something to nitpick about all of them. A couple years too old, £10m too expensive, low cost but highly unlikely to do anything.

And the result of doing this 8 times is essentially the equivalent of doing something like Man United buying Antony. There is no single Antony here, but Spurs have recreated one of the Premier League’s worst transfers in the aggregate.

Tonali is a good player who makes Spurs better. He is a better passer than anyone they had last season, and a better ball-winner than anyone who they had permanently signed to their team. He’s also too expensive for a 26-year-old, who is just OK at passing, and who has a gambling suspension on his record. Roberto De Zerbi also said he wasn’t fully fit Gameweek 1, despite not going to the World Cup or being injured this summer. Quite the £100m player you’ve got there.

Fernandes looks like he’s going to be a very good playmaking No. 8. He was solid for bad teams the last two seasons, and improved his passing year over year. He also hasn’t quite put it all together yet, and has contributed to two teams getting relegated, and is currently playing as a makeshift No. 10 due to Spurs’ injury catastrophe. He does not currently look like an £85m player, but he’s probably the transfer I like the most here, because I do think he has some extremely huge potential upside in a deeper role.

Savio is close, especially given that the fee is kind of fake. Because City wanted to avoid paying Frankfurt a big sell-on for Marmoush, they had Spurs overpay by Savio for £10m while undervaluing Marmoush by about the same. While Savio’s finishing leaves quite a bit to be desired, his dribbling output and xG + xA p90 have historically been spectacular, and a team like Spurs rolling the dice that he can be a star if given a key role makes sense.

Van Hecke is a good center back, but paying that much for someone with one year left on their contract — especially when you’re selling the same team his replacement for a reasonable price — is a very poor piece of negotiating.

The free transfers are all good squad players and appear to be good culture pieces. Those are nice signings.

Tosin and Mudryk are actually bad players who should not be in the league, and signing them for any amount of money is insane. —KM

Ted: C- | Kim: C- | Hayden: B

Spurs did a pretty good job getting decent fees for players who were not going to play a big role for them next season, and they got plenty of junk out the door. Not selling Romero for a reported £50m+ offer last season looks very bad in retrospect. The Vuskovic fee is fine in a vacuum, but bad given the aforementioned Van Hecke business. The Spence fee is really good for a guy who looked like a bust a year ago, and then had a pretty solid half-season and World Cup.

We put all the add-ons in the totals because it’s hard to separate out the easily achievable from the fantasy ones, but in this case, Spurs are only likely to get the full add-ons for Phillips and Lankshear if Middlesbrough are promoted this year. —KM

Ted: B- | Kim: B | Hayden: B

Everything hurts and I’m dying.

Overall grade: C

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