Arsenal, Nottingham Forest, Manchester City, Chelsea and Newcastle can all spark life into the title race with January transfers but Liverpool hold the key.
10) Manchester City sign Abdukodir Khusanov
In near enough a decade as Manchester City manager, Guardiola has made an entire two first-team additions to his squad in January transfer windows. Since Gabriel Jesus and Aymeric Laporte joined in consecutive campaigns, the mid-season market has been viewed with an opportunistic, long-term slant by the club with Julian Alvarez and Claudio Echeverri secured but making their moves at a later date.
Like this season, Manchester City were ostensibly not in a title race when either Jesus or Laporte were signed. Seven points back in 2017 having played a game more than leaders Chelsea eight years ago, they were 12 ahead a year later in their Centurions season. The same gap separates them from Liverpool now.
And while bridging that gap and catching each of the other four clubs in between sounds vanishingly unrealistic, sorting out the defence would no doubt help. Everton are among the seven sides to have conceded fewer Premier League goals this season, with injuries having exposed a sheer lack of depth at the Etihad.
Lens centre-half Khusanov will not cost quite as much as Laporte but the hope is he can have a similarly transformative effect, perhaps without the move to Saudi in his theoretical peak years.
9) Arsenal sign Bryan Mbeumo
Brentford will justifiably take some convincing to sanction their first winter sale of a first-team player since Chris Mepham left the Championship’s mid-table for Bournemouth in 2019, but with their season essentially over it would be gross negligence if no club even attempts to explore the possibility of signing Mbeumo early ahead of what should be a summer auction.
The Cameroon international has long looked like precisely the sort of hard-working, Premier League-proven, no-frills, hyphen-friendly forward with a scalable skillset ready to explode at a higher level that Liverpool used to covet at their peak. Only eight players across Europe’s top five leagues have more combined goals and assists this season and Mbeumo is alone in playing for a team lower than sixth.
Thomas Frank will resent every element of a typically Big Six-slanted discussion but Brentford are All But Safe from relegation with an eight-point gap to the bottom three and already out of both domestic cups. While Arsenal would have to pay a premium, it would be worth solving a whole host of problems in attack.
8) AC Milan sign Kyle Walker
As sub-optimal as it seems for your captain to hand in his notice mid-season, Walker extricating himself from this mess as soon as possible is the best outcome. A career downturn triggered seemingly as soon as pen touched paper on his latest contract when persuaded to stay in September 2023 has become one of Guardiola’s most infuriating blind spots and the manager is not about to discard one of his most trusted lieutenants through choice.
In an ideal world all parties would put off the inevitable until the summer but club and player need an immediate clean break and fresh start. As much as Walker still has to give at 34, the beacon of consistency, quality and reliability has turned into a liability Manchester City cannot afford as part of their ambitious rebuild; his presence has become an unnecessary distraction.
Still not over the Euro 2024 final if we’re being honest.
7) Manchester City sign Omar Marmoush
Forgive the heavy weighting towards Manchester City but theirs was already the most interesting window without the Walker subplot. A couple of sustained years of ludicrous transfer mistakes were retrospectively revealed through the horrors of a recent run which laid bare shortcomings in attack as much as weaknesses in defence.
Brentford are among the five sides to score more goals this season and for the first time in his Premier League career, the Golden Boot currently does not fit Erling Haaland. Second and third in their top scorer stakes are Josko Gvardiol and Mateo Kovacic, which does not scream ‘coherent attacking plan’.
“In the summertime, the club thought about doing it, and I said: ‘No, I don’t want to make any signings. I rely on the team and I want to stay with them.’ Just Savinho came – and Gundo back I wasn’t expecting,” Guardiola said recently, the Spaniard admitting his mistake. That has at least allowed Nottingham Forest target Omar Marmoush to emerge on their radar with 19 goals and 12 assists in 25 games for Frankfurt as the perfect Alvarez replacement.
6) Nottingham Forest sign Igor Jesus
Nuno Espirito Santo has struck a balance so pure it is not worth wondering whether Nottingham Forest might have gone even further if Marmoush or fellow object of City Ground affection Santiago Gimenez had been secured in the summer.
Both players spurned the chance to take notes on Chris Wood and that is ultimately their loss.
But there does remain a desire to burnish this squad with another forward. As beloved as Taiwo Awoniyi undoubtedly is his limits will be uncomfortably revealed the higher this Forest rocket rises, while their position presents a unique opportunity and finite cache.
Wood needs cover and Forest have a Champions League campaign to unjinxingly prepare for. Their interest in Igor Jesus is shared with Arsenal but Mikel Arteta’s aversion to signing strikers is a boost, and Edu is jumping ship because it only takes one look at Murillo to realise Evangelos Marinakis has stolen the blueprint for South American scouting from Brighton.
5) Chelsea sign Mathys Tel
Enzo Maresca was dismissing Chelsea’s title credentials when they resembled Liverpool’s closest challengers so his thoughts after an abysmal run of two draws and defeats each over the festive period can be safely assumed.
But there the Blues remain, fourth and within touching distance of two of the sides above them, while the wheels fall off at Liverpool after *checks notes* a draw and first-leg loss in a cup semi-final.
The Nicolas Jackson well has run dry and Cole Palmer’s chippy chips can only power him for so long. But Chelsea’s recent vague operational competence was only ever a visage and ultimately they were always going to sell their joint-top scorer so they could sign another club’s goalless young talent.
Christopher Nkunku has used the Conference League as the stat-padding platform it is but Mathys Tel is shiny and new and will fall for the 427-year amortisation contract.
4) Newcastle sign Tyler Dibling
When Newcastle capitulated in a 4-2 defeat to Brentford in early December the only logical conclusion was that they were about to embark on an eight-game winning run taking them into a Champions League qualification place and the brink of a cup final, having slain in consecutive matches the giants of Manchester United, Tottenham, Arsenal and Bromley.
Eddie Howe has engineered a remarkable turnaround to cushion the inevitable blow of a PSR points deduction threat which will force them to sell Jason Tindall to the highest bidder.
The talk at St James’ Park is comedically perennially of the latent need to offload a key player, which feels slightly off-track from the world domination plan devised after the Saudi takeover. It simply will not do that Odysseas Vlachodimos is their most expensive new signing this season so the time has come to rescue Dibling from the Southampton wreckage before he too gets Derby 2007/08’d.
3) Arsenal sign Nico Williams
“Arteta loves Nico Williams. It’s a long-term admiration. He would have liked to have signed him in the past. He would really like to sign him in this January transfer window, but we all would like things in life that we can’t have, and there is a good chance that he can’t have Nico Williams because of the finances involved,” said David Ornstein with all the gravitas of an unnecessarily well-spoken and specific parent.
It is Arsenal and it is January so it is time for them to make an awful lot of noise about their top transfer target before either signing no-one or a random Plan B cast-off. They know Williams would cost £50m or so. They know it would be a one-off payment. They know his wages would be stratospheric.
But there is something truly beautiful about Arteta examining this squad, sensing a defect in terms of goalscoring and open-play chance creation, and then setting his entire sodding stall out on a player with two goals and five assists for Athletic Bilbao this season. Williams must be exceptional at either taking corners or undoing goalkeeper gloves.
2) Manchester City sign Douglas Luiz
It is difficult to overstate how phenomenal it is that Nottingham ‘Points Deduction’ Forest and Manchester ‘115 Charges’ City are in direct competition over the capture of Douglas Luiz, who Aston Villa were forced into selling in a PSR panic when devising their Champions League campaign.
Luiz could be accused of a similar lack of forward-planning, having failed to sense that Thiago Motta was going to use any possible central midfielder before him when embarking on the least inspirational unbeaten run in sporting history.
Barely able to get a game for the team fifth in Serie A, Luiz has options available for a return to happier climes and perhaps the ability to prove a further point with former club Manchester City would appeal most. For Guardiola, a midfielder with functional legs would be most welcome.
READ MORE: Ten Manchester City moves for Pep Guardiola’s perfect January transfer window
1) Liverpool sign Milos Kerkez
But the initiative and six-point lead with a game in hand ultimately belongs to Liverpool. If they act sufficiently in the winter the Premier League title is theirs; even if they don’t the most likely scenario remains an Anfield trophy parade.
The fury in the fanbase at PSG being given a free run at Khvicha Kvaratskhelia or interest in Antoine Semenyo being left to fester is a great bit, as if Liverpool are not literally top of two tables after the least convincing of summer transfer windows.
Yet any slight sense of drift could be checked with the sort of ruthlessly efficient signing Liverpool have not made in so long. Bournemouth would have plenty to say on the matter – so too would Andy Robertson – but the Reds could make any moves their rivals make redundant in a flash.
