The transfer window slammed shut on Tuesday night in the Premier League, but remained open for Scotland, Turkey, and other leagues for a few more days, and had already closed for Germany before the Premier League. This might be the year that the wealth of the Premier League has caught up with itself, with massive transfer fees between Premier League clubs becoming the norm. £3.49 billion was spent in total by Premier League clubs, and whereas in the past a lot of that money might have been spent on players from foreign leagues, the bulk of it seems to have been spent within the league this summer.
With so many new signings coming into the league, 155 players were bought in total during this summer transfer window, what does this mean for announcement culture?
Announcement culture has grown over the past decade as social media has become such a massive part of football and everyday life. Instead of just the press photo of a player holding a scarf or pretending to sign their contract, there are now teaser videos and cryptic posts on Instagram and TikTok, videos aimed at not just getting the news of a star signing to fans of the club, but to also aim to go viral and reach a global audience by thinking outside of the box.
How was there even time for the social media experts at each club to put together fresh ideas to announce signings when there were so many?
Transfers such as Morgan Rogers to Chelsea from Aston Villa for £117 million, Manchester City paying £116 million for Elliot Anderson from Nottingham Forest and Enzo Fernandez from Chelsea for £125 million, Tottenham signing Savio from Manchester City for £75 million, and Arsenal signing Bruno Guimares from Newcastle for £75 million. These are all top level signings, worthy of an announcement video, but there just wasn’t the time to capture the imagination of the fans this summer, because by the time the ink was dry on the contracts for a brand new signing and a video was released, another club was announcing a new player and the cameras and the attention had shifted.
All of these signings might have required an arty announcement video, like the famous Alexis Sanchez video of him playing ‘Glory Glory Man United’ on a piano in an empty Old Trafford after signing from Arsenal in 2018. Another famous announcement video was for Wout Weghorst’s Jurassic Park-themed video for his 2022 transfer from Wolfsburg to Burnley. It’s the most memorable part of his time at Turf Moor. We did get Bradley Barcola’s ‘Allex Les Rouges’ Liverpool video to add to modern announcement culture, but it felt like it took all summer dragging on as a transfer that even that was met with a tepid response by Liverpool fans.
In an age where no one has an attention span anymore and we’re all doomscrolling away our lives on our phones, transfer deadline day did just feel like one big doomscroll. Every few seconds there was another incoming transfer or collapsed deal, or there was the hijacking story of deadline day with Fofana maybe going to Arsenal, then to Sunderland, for Crystal Palace to hijack the deal, two planes waiting for him to go, and eventually he signed for Sunderland late in the night on transfer deadline day. Everton left themselves short, selling their best player, their second striker, and bringing in no one else after Jack Grealish returned on loan and their backup right back transfer of Maitland-Niles was through the door. They did have Balogun at the training ground, contracts ready to go, but he didn’t like how he had been treated over the medical, so decided to stay at Monaco instead. Richarlison was maybe heading back to Everton after a social media post about how Roberto De Zerbi has hurt his feelings, but that fell through too and he might end up at Trabzonspor. This was just one club on deadline day, but fans of almost every club was going through the same rollercoaster of emotions and mainly disappointment.
Is this the end of the hype around transfer deadline day or will we all be excited again by the time January rolls around and clubs can buy players again? Will announcement culture continue to grow or has this wild summer of Premier League transfers dampened enthusiasm for good?
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