Transfer Window Recap — Keane Returns To Spurs, Arsenal Add Arshavin

The story that gen­er­ated the most head­lines out­side of the Kaka to Man­ches­ter City, was the saga of Rob­bie Keane’s depar­ture from Liv­er­pool back to Tot­ten­ham. Keane made his “dream move” to Liv­er­pool this past sum­mer when the club splashed out an ini­tial £19m to buy his ser­vices from Tot­ten­ham Hot­spur. After fail­ing to win a reg­u­lar start­ing place under Rafa Ben­itez, Keane has signed a four-year con­tract at Spurs with the fee start­ing at £12m and ris­ing with add-ons. Keane man­aged to score just five goals in 19 appear­ances for Liv­er­pool. The trans­fer would appear to be a good move for Tot­ten­ham, as another recent returnee, striker Jer­main Defoe, will be out of action until April because of a foot injury he picked up in training.

The club also did some work to address the areas I felt need strength­en­ing — defence and cen­tral mid­field. They acquired some help at the back in yet another for­mer player, Pas­cal Chim­bonda, who left Sun­der­land and appar­ently took a pay cut to return to Spurs. The cen­tral mid­fielder they pur­chased, Wil­son Pala­cios, is another cre­ative type and I’m still not sure if he’s what they need. Pala­cios is a nice player, very cre­ative but I’m not con­vinced he’ll add the graft they need in cen­tral midfield.

Spurs also picked up Carlo Cud­icini to give man­ager Harry Red­knapp another expe­ri­enced choice for tge goal­keeper posi­tion. Chelsea allowed him to move on a free trans­fer, and thanked the Ital­ian “for his years of ser­vice and wish him well”. The 35-year-old was Chelsea’s second-longest serv­ing player behind John Terry, hav­ing joined the club from ASD Cas­tel di San­gro Cal­cio in 1999 when the Lon­don side were still coached by fel­low Ital­ian Gian­luca Vialli. Cud­icini was Chelsea’s 2002 Player of the Year and was first choice for sev­eral years prior to Petr Cech’s arrival at Stam­ford Bridge in 2004.

Tot­ten­ham are still near the foot of the Pre­mier League in 14th place, but are just one point clear of the bot­tom three with 14 Pre­mier League fix­tures remain­ing. They are still involved in UEFA Cup play (with a Round of 32 tie against Shakhtar Donetsk slated for Feb 19th and 26th) and have a Car­ling Cup final date against Man­ches­ter United at Wem­b­ley on March 1st. The return­ing Keane will not be eli­gi­ble for that match because he is cup-tied.

Tottenham’s spend­ing spree helped push Pre­mier League clubs total out­lay to a record £178m in this Jan­u­ary trans­fer win­dow, com­pared with £146m in 2008, £63m in 2007 and only £35m when the sys­tem was intro­duced in 2003. Credit crunch? What credit crunch?

Com­ing in a close sec­ond in gen­er­at­ing the most sto­ries was the pro­longed trans­fer of Andrey Arshavin from Zenit St. Peters­burg to Arse­nal. The on-again, off-again move was finally com­pleted 24 hours after the actual clos­ing of the trans­fer win­dow. The move to Arse­nal is impor­tant for sev­eral rea­sons. First, they are in the midst of a bat­tle for a top-four spot and a berth into the Cham­pi­ons League. Sec­ondly, the club has been lack­ing some cre­ativ­ity in the mid­field and Arshavin has shown him­self to be a world-class player through his dis­plays in the UEFA Cup and at Euro 2008. Lastly, the reported £16 or 17m fee dis­pels the myth that Arsene Wenger is unwill­ing to spend money in the trans­fer mar­ket. He has long main­tained that he would only spend big money on an actual star-caliber player. The 27-year-old play­maker has claimed the vacant No 23 shirt.

A strange move, at least strange to me, was Julien Faubert’s leav­ing West Ham United FC on a loan to Real Madrid CF until the end of the sea­son. The ver­sa­tile 25-year-old French­man had filled in at right-back as well as on the right side of mid­field for West Ham and will give Real Madrid coach Juande Ramos options on the right side. Madrid have the option of buy­ing him out­right in June though no fee was dis­closed. The move is strange for me, not that Faubert is not good enough to be a Real Madrid player, though some might ques­tion that, but rather that West Ham would be will­ing to part ways with him. He seemed to be a use­ful player to have around but the BBC reports that Real will pay a £1.5m fee for the loan, which may be all the expla­na­tion needed. West Ham are report­edly tight for funds and the fee + future trans­fer funds was obvi­ously too tempt­ing. Faubert has been given the No. 18 jer­sey, a num­ber that he inher­its from Ruben de la Red, who has been ruled out for the rest of the sea­son because of his heart problems.

In another bit of related news, Real Madrid had to choose between new sign­ings for their Cham­pi­ons League squad as UEFA rules that state only one player can be reg­is­tered who has already played in a UEFA com­pe­ti­tion with another club this sea­son. Real Madrid decided to select mid­fielder Las­sana Diarra to play in the Cham­pi­ons League knock­out stages and not striker Klaas Jan Hunte­laar. Real, who face Liv­er­pool in the Cham­pi­ons League last 16, had argued that the rule was dis­crim­i­na­tory, point­ing to play­ers who can play in two Euro­pean com­pe­ti­tions when their clubs drop from the Cham­pi­ons League into the UEFA Cup. Hunte­laar and Diarra have already played in the UEFA Cup this sea­son for Ajax and Portsmouth respectively.

Chelsea have secured the loan sign­ing of Ricardo Quaresma from Inter­nazionale after the Por­tu­gal inter­na­tional winger was left out of the club’s squad for the knock-out phase of the Cham­pi­ons League by man­ager Jose Mour­inho. Quaresma has worked with Luiz Felipe Sco­lari with the Por­tuguese national team and will look to get some con­fi­dence back after being labelled as a ‘flop’ by Inter fans. He was heck­led dur­ing recent matches after fail­ing to make the desired impact at the San Siro since join­ing from Porto for around £15m last sum­mer. Wor­ringly, the Portuguese’s spell in Italy mir­rored the one he endured at Barcelona in his one sea­son at the Cata­lan club and there will now be ques­tions about his abil­ity to “step up to the big time”.

Tagged as: andrey arshavin, arsenal, julien faubert, liverpool, real madrid, robbie keane, tottenham, wilson palacios