Premier League Transfer Window: Winners and Losers

Two days on from the most unhinged Premier League transfer window yet and the dust hasn’t so much settled as rearranged itself into new, even stranger shapes.

Who won? Who lost? Does any of it actually matter? This was the summer when the Chelseafication of the market felt complete: numbers so big they stopped feeling real, fees so daft they almost stopped needing justification.

It had the air of a housing bubble. Values soaring because… well, because that’s what they do now. Spend £100 million on a dud? Don’t worry. Someone will be along shortly to give you £80 million back and call it an opportunity.

How do you apply logic in a world where Chelsea can pay £60 million for Mykhailo Mudryk, watch him struggle, watch him get banned, and still line up a deal that might actually turn a profit this time next year?

You don’t. But we’ll try anyway.

Three weeks ago, before the actual football barged back into view, we picked out 10 glaring problems across the league. Now the window’s shut, the games have started, and the question is simple: did anyone really fix anything? Or is it all just noise?

Tottenham’s striker: everyone and no one

This always felt like the place to start. Harry Kane left more than a year ago and Tottenham still don’t really have *a* striker. They have *some* forwards.

Since that early-August snapshot, Spurs have brought in Savio, Omar Marmoush and, yes, Mudryk. They have not moved on Dominic Solanke or Richarlison, both still jostling for position and, by all accounts, still not exactly in harmony with Roberto De Zerbi.

De Zerbi has already set Savio a double-figure goals target. That tells its own story. This is going to be a collective effort rather than a classic number nine operation.

Marmoush looks a sharp bit of business, a player who decided life behind Erling Haaland at Manchester City was a waste of a career and backed himself elsewhere. He’s versatile, clever, busy. But he’s not that traditional penalty-box bully either.

The clues are there in the players Spurs chased and missed: Cody Gakpo, Iliman Ndiaye. More fluid forwards, not fixed-point strikers. It suggests De Zerbi doesn’t actually want an old-fashioned centre-forward. And he more or less got everything he did ask for this summer.

The issue is the scoreboard. Two Premier League games, zero goals, and not much sign of one. If this new, multi-pronged attack is going to click, it needs to do it fast. Otherwise that amusingly stuttering start for a club finally throwing its weight around could turn into another year of angst.

Manchester City’s midfield: panic averted by another fortune

This one started as a post-Community Shield wobble. Always dangerous territory. But the sight of a Manchester City midfield built around Elliott Anderson and Mateo Kovacic in Cardiff did raise eyebrows.

City’s response was brutally on brand: throw another nine-figure fee at it and bring in Enzo Fernandez from Chelsea.

Fernandez was already set up as a Premier League villain after his World Cup antics. Now he’s become the face of the league’s excess, hopping from one financial superpower to another and dragging another eye-watering fee with him.

He arrives with a target on his back. Plenty of people will be desperate for this to blow up in City’s face, even if it means Anderson – previously a likeable underdog story – gets lost in the shuffle.

Manchester United’s defence: the gamble exposed early

United did their midfield surgery. That was overdue. But they left the defence largely untouched, and the early evidence has not been kind.

Two games. Two promoted teams. Four goals conceded. The same creaks and groans that were there four years ago when they were shipping four at Brentford are still audible.

The schedule will bite soon. Two games a week, pressure rising, and a huge amount resting on Luke Shaw staying fit and reliable for months on end. That is not a safety net; it’s a tightrope.

Liverpool’s fitness: late goals, familiar questions

While City, Chelsea and Spurs grabbed the headlines with their wild spending, Liverpool quietly finished the window with the biggest net spend of all – and a squad that doesn’t obviously look stronger.

Bradley Barcola is an exhilarating, high-ceiling signing, but also eye-wateringly expensive. And if this is going to be more than just another shiny addition, Liverpool still need last summer’s pricey forwards to finally take off.

On the specific issue of fitness, the signs are mixed. Two 2-2 draws, two late equalisers. On one hand, that screams resilience and legs. On the other, this time last year they were nicking late winners that masked deeper flaws.

Maybe these are just isolated moments. Maybe it’s déjà vu. Maybe it’s just stuff happening. The table won’t tell the truth for a while yet.

Chelsea’s goalkeeper: one problem solved, another created

At least Chelsea gave us one clean, obvious storyline. The goalkeeping situation was a mess before a ball was kicked. It looked even worse after the first game. Then they did something about it.

Emi Martinez in. Robert Sanchez out of the firing line. Whatever else we disagree on, this is straightforward: Martinez is better than Sanchez.

That rare consensus is brief, because this is Chelsea and this is 2026. Fernandez has gone, nobody has replaced him, and the worry has simply shifted 20 yards up the pitch.

No European football will help. Chelsea can probably muddle through to January with Moises Caicedo as the anchor and a rotating cast of Romeo Lavia, Valentin Barco and Reece James filling in around him. Then, if history is any guide, they’ll throw another £80 million at someone.

There’s always the free-agent market too, football’s version of the bargain bin. Given Tottenham’s long-standing habit of hoovering up Chelsea’s cast-offs, there would be a certain chaos to the Blues turning to Yves Bissouma or, for maximum farce, Tanguy Ndombele just to plug a gap until the new year.

Aston Villa’s midfield: quiet move, big potential

Amid the noise, Aston Villa did something quietly smart. Leon Goretzka walked away from Bayern Munich and into Villa Park on a free, almost unnoticed.

It might turn out to be one of the canniest bits of business of the window.

Villa have gone through another summer of upheaval, all while clinging to that chip-on-both-shoulders identity. The spine that powered their rise – Emiliano Martinez, Ezri Konsa, Youri Tielemans, Morgan Rogers, Ollie Watkins – has been heavily disrupted.

Yet the recruitment has mostly looked sharp across the pitch. The table says goalless and pointless so far, but compared to other clubs in that same boat, Villa’s start feels like a wobble, not a warning.

Newcastle’s Newcastle: crisis cancelled (for now)

So much for the existential angst. Matthias Jaissle has walked in, flicked a few switches, and Newcastle look… fine. Better than fine, actually.

Four points from games against Liverpool and Tottenham is a strong opening statement. The nagging doubt is what those results really tell us. Are Newcastle genuinely in good shape, or have they simply caught two big clubs in varying states of disarray?

Bournemouth this weekend should offer a more reliable measure. A less silly club, a more normal game. Then we’ll know more.

Fulham’s manager: from perfect fit to uneasy marriage

Alvaro Arbeloa, the Temu version of Xabi Alonso, has already been installed as the early favourite in the Sack Race. That takes some doing when Tottenham are misfiring and Evangelos Marinakis hasn’t fired anyone for weeks.

Fulham and Marco Silva always felt like one of those rare perfect fits: right manager, right club, right moment. The fact both parties decided it was time to move on doesn’t make it any less jarring.

Arbeloa has never looked the most convincing of this season’s Premier League newcomers. The squad still has quality, the structure still looks sound, but the chemistry that defined the Silva era has gone. Recreating that is the hardest part.

Coventry’s Sky Bet aura: hard to shake

Coventry still absolutely reek of the Sky Bet era. Losing to Hull hasn’t helped, and their upcoming fixtures look brutal: Manchester City, Brighton, Nottingham Forest, Newcastle.

By the time they get the traditional respite of a trip to Dr Tottenham in late October, they could already be staring up at safety from a worrying distance.

The numbers tell their own story. Coventry have thrown £150 million at this squad and it still looks, at best, like Championship Deluxe. That, more than any single mega-deal, shows how absurd the market has become for promoted sides trying to just look vaguely Premier League-ready.

Crystal Palace’s defence: the Chelsea carousel spins again

Crystal Palace still sit firmly in the “worry about them” category after two defeats, capped by a very unfinished Manchester City side strolling all over them last Friday.

They’ve tried to patch things up by dipping into the Chelsea vortex. Axel Disasi has arrived on loan, as he apparently must. At this point it feels like there’s a Premier League rota: everyone gets a turn with Disasi.

Then there’s Honest Ahanor, who is on loan from Atalanta, but only technically. In reality, he’s joining Chelsea next summer. It’s a deal that feels queasy on principle, a move that openly sprints through a loophole while winking at the rulebook. The fact the player is literally called Honest only adds to the absurdity.

To complete the Chelsea flavour, Ben Chilwell is back. He spent time on loan at Palace a couple of seasons ago and now returns from Strasbourg, injured again.

And that, really, is the final red flag. Years of transfer-window experience tell you one thing: when a club is signing an injured Ben Chilwell on deadline day, they are not calm. They are distressed. And the season rarely gets simpler from there.