After the Window: Spurs

Spurs late summer looked a lot like the one experienced across North London at Arsenal. What the acquisitions lacked in romance and long term strategic benefit they more than made up for in being effective near-term band-aids. Spurs needed something new at forward and a deep-lying player to both win the ball and start the attack. It certainly would have been nice to find a reliable partner for Michael Dawson but presumably the combination of Ledley King and William Gallas will be able to get the job done for 80% of the matches over the course of the upcoming season.

After the Window: Chelsea

I apologize for the delay in getting past the first team transfer summary.  We are using the international break for a nice rustic vacation in Maine.  I’ve been trying to generally stay away from the internet, email, and the other things that I tend to use for both my day job as well as staying up with current events in the Premier League and posting to the blog.  That lasted for a solid 3 days before I felt the pull of the laptop – I guess that’s why I’ve gotten involved in writing a blog on top of a day job. 

As it appears that I’m not going to get to every team, I’m going to start with the ones that have made the most substantial changes and move downward toward the ones that didn’t do much toward the end of window.  Since we’ve already covered Arsenal, I’ll move on to Chelsea.

I LOVED what Chelsea did toward the end of the window.  They had the type of window that Arsenal used to have.  Pick up a few very high end kids and throw in a very strong continental veteran.  The difference?  The price of the high end kids that used to be Arsenal’s stock and trade has increased by a factor of about ten since this was Wenger’s strategy.  I don’t know all the details but my guess is that Chelsea ended up paying Mata and Lukaku (and their previous clubs) like they were already established stars rather than rising talents with the potential to be the “next” someone good.   The economics aside, the moves look excellent.  The only downside is that they probably won’t payoff in huge measure for another couple years. 

After the Window: Arsenal

Volumes and volumes have been written about Arsenal and their travails from February of 2011 through the close of the transfer window.  Since we're pretty sure you've read quite enough about "contending in 4 competitions to nothing in the blink of an eye" and "Nasri/Cesc/Clichy out" and "will anyone arrive?" that we won't cover that ground again.  Instead, we'll spend some time focusing on what we have learned from the first three matches of the season plus the final touches from the transfer window.