The Window Closes
We can get ready for winter now, the summer transfer window has closed, slammed shut and been locked. There will be no further signings, free agents apart, until the New Year when the one month panic window opens.
How has this window gone for Burnley? Some will say well, others not so well. Some will point to Middlesbrough getting most of their business done early, something you can do when you are prepared to pay high wages, and others will show that Hull, the other promoted club, made all of their six first team signings this week.
Most clubs will see positives and negatives in their transfer business and right to the wire yesterday we had one big positive but two negatives as we missed out on two other targets. All summer we have been chasing Derby’s Jeff Hendrick and Brighton’s Dale Stephens. It was a case of one hit and one miss in the end with another big miss coming at the eleventh hour when Polish winger Kamil Grosicki didn’t become a Burnley player with his club Rennes pulling the plug on the deal when they demanded more money just as we thought we’d got our man.
Had those other two deals gone through then I’m sure we’d have all said it had been a brilliant window, albeit another late one, but unfortunately, particularly with the failure to land a wide man, we have not quite made it to the level of brilliance.
It must have been a chaotic day for Hendrick. He flew in from Ireland to have his medical and complete the deal and then flew back to make his 26th international appearance for Ireland in Robbie Keane’s farewell game.
In the early hours of this morning, he took to Twitter to thank everyone at Derby their support over the last eight years with a special thanks to the fans. Dale Stephens, who remains at Brighton despite all our attempts to get him, also used Twitter just before midnight to explain to their fans why he asked for a transfer yesterday. He said it was because he wanted the opportunity to play Premier League football.
He ended the message by saying: “I prefer to give you honesty rather than shy away from my actions now the window is closed. I respect and understand your frustration as this is your football club. I have 10 months remaining and will honour my contract.”
It is over four months since I learned of our interest in Stephens. Given that we were still pursuing him yesterday at the same time as getting the Hendrick deal done, suggests that we will be monitoring that situation very closely.
So, no Stephens or Grosicki but the window has closed with us adding six players to the first team squad and that group includes full internationals from Belgium, England, Iceland and the Republic of Ireland. We now have eight full internationals at Burnley, and that would have been ten but for both Danny Lafferty and Fredrik Ulvestad going out on loan.
It was a certainly a busy day through the exit door with seven players leaving, including Lafferty and Ulvestad. Also going out on loan were Lukas Jutkiewicz, Tom Anderson and Ntumba Massanka while both Renny Smith and Cameron Dummigan were sold, Smith going to Italy and Dummigan returning to Oldham in League One.
Loans this window, there have been a lot of them. We’ve now got 14 of our players out at various clubs. Some of them are young players getting an opportunity to play first team football while others are perhaps players who are ready for moving on from Burnley.
Of the two players who left us permanently yesterday; Smith impressed me on the one occasion I saw him play and I have to admit I’m still amazed at the departure of Dummigan. Sean Dyche has continued to speak so highly of him and I was shocked when news of the the Oldham move came; I’d expected it to be a loan.
A window will always be judged on the players you bring in and so we have to look at the signings of Johann Berg Gudmundsson, Nick Pope, Jon Flanagan, Steven Defour, Patrick Bamford and Jeff Hendrick but I would suggest we can also judge the window in terms of players who were at Burnley and remain at Burnley.
When our team is selected for the game against Hull a week on Saturday, it is likely that Michael Keane will line up in the centre of defence. I’d say that’s as good as any of the signings. For long periods during this window we thought we were going to lose him to Leicester. That’s not happened; Keane is still a Claret and that’s a major boost for us.
So how has this window gone for us? Of course it could have been better, and certainly would have been so had we got the other two deals completed yesterday, but it could have been a lot, lot worse. We don’t need to go back too far do we to recall disastrous windows.
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