Matt Maher: Don’t rush to judge clubs’ transfer window success

How well did (insert club name here) do? Who were the summer’s winners and losers?

Such pieces are always premature. It takes months, if not years to determine whether a window has been a success or failure.

Just how different, for instance, does Villa’s January business now look thanks to the rapid ascent of Morgan Rogers?

What we can say for certain, even before this window closes, is no club on this patch has found the summer easy.

At both Albion and Villa, we have witnessed impressive displays of virtual plate spinning by those in charge of transfer strategy. By tonight, we may be able to say the same about Wolves, depending on whether Gary O’Neil gets the players he wants prior to the deadline.

Things look a bit more settled for their rivals. Barring a late shock, Albion’s business concluded with the £3million signing of Mikey Johnston from Celtic, a slightly surprising (in the nicest possible way) finish to a window in which the club has once again been operating with one eye firmly on the bottom line.

Shilen Patel’s takeover means we no longer have to fret about the very future of the Baggies themselves. It has also meant, for the first time in two years and in Carlos Corberan’s reign, they have paid fees for players.

Yet the scars of the Guochuan Lai regime will take time to heal. A considerable financial loss is expected for the 2023-24 season and it means the Baggies have needed to tread carefully in the market to ensure they do not breach the EFL’s fair play rules in future.

To finish the window having signed 10 new players and kept all of those you ideally wanted, should therefore be recognised as a pretty impressive achievement.

Albion have not made this many signings in a summer window since 2014 and while things didn’t exactly work out as planned back then, these are different players and Corberan a very different manager to Alan Irvine.

Outgoings were always necessary for incomings to occur and by and large, you suspect the Spaniard will be pretty satisfied with the club’s work.

It is a similar story with his compatriot Unai Emery at Villa.

In an ideal world, you suspect Unai Emery would have liked to add at least one or two more players to Villa’s squad as they prepare for their first foray into the Champions League.

Yet an ideal world is a long way from where Villa have been operating for much of the summer.

Perhaps by 11pm tonight he will have another player on board, though efforts to get a deal for Feyenoord defender Lutsharel Geertruida have proven tricky. As with virtually all of Villa’s business over the summer, it has been a question of trying to make the numbers work and the Dutch club’s demand of £30million for the 24-year-old looks like being beyond their capabilities unless there is a significant departure to help balance things out.

That, essentially, is the same position in which the club have been throughout a window dictated to a large extent by the Premier League’s profit and sustainability rules (PSR). All things told, you’d say Villa’s president of football operations Monchi, ably assisted by head of football ops Damian Vidagany, has done a pretty good job of playing the cards the club found themselves holding at the end of May.

The deal which held everything else together was the sale of Douglas Luiz to Juventus for a fee of £42.5m which went much of the way to ensuring Villa would complete the 2023-24 financial year within the PSR limits. It is an agreement which has come under scrutiny again in recent days because of the short-term fates of the two players who arrived in the other direction, in deals which were separate in name only.

Neither Samuel Iling-Junior or Enzo Barrenechea, signed for combined fees of £21m, made it into Villa’s first two matchday squads. Iling-Junior promptly departed earlier this week on loan to Bologna, while Barrenechea appeared destined to spend the campaign with Valencia before the move broke down. At time of writing, there were attempts to resurrect it.

It is quite possible both will become big players for Villa in the future. Yet in the here and now, they were necessary signings to ensure the sale of Luiz. Add the £42.5m and £21m figures together and you get closer to the Brazilian’s true market value. Villa, who needed to raise funds before the end of June, could not afford to wait for a club who could afford to match it.

The additional sales of Omari Kellyman (£19m) and Tim Iroegbunam (£9m) erased any PSR concerns for now, while the £51m sale of Moussa Diaby reduced the wage bill and will help when it comes to the other spinning plate, Uefa’s cost controls which this season limits clubs to spending just 80 per cent of their revenue on transfer fees, wages and agents’ fees.

Diaby had already been replaced as the club’s record signing by Amadou Onana, a player who has already made an impact.

Ian Maatsen, signed from Chelsea for £37.5m, looks promising, while in Ross Barkley the club has added an experienced midfielder who will play plenty of matches for just £5m.

Villa’s inability to do more, after the hectic opening weeks, is as much about ensuring they do not again find their dealings so extensively dictated by PSR in future windows.

Just like Albion, they have been working with one hand tied. Just like Albion, they can feel relatively pleased at the job they’ve made of it.