Free Agents for EFL Clubs, Updated January window, Allsvenskan in Focus - Pro GBE Bulletin 2

As the January transfer window rumbles on there have been more examples of clubs in England, Scotland, and also in the Women's game using the GBE/ESC legislation to improve their squads.

My take on January, which I told to Matt Watts on The 72cast recently, was that it is more of a window to affect the season that we are currently in. Whilst there should always be an element of a long term plan to any transfer made, there is often half-an-eye on the short term outcomes in January. This is just one of the things that make talent identification and, especially, negotiation in January particularly difficult.

Every club wants to leave a transfer window stronger than they began it. Some owners may view that strength differently to head coaches, i.e. money in the bank or more sustainable wage bill, as against a stronger depth of squad or higher quality first XI. Regardless, this aspiration to be stronger going into February means that value can be very hard to come by, at least in the domestic market.

This is sometimes where the worldwide market can be very useful. As I touched on last week, there are a number of leagues that run their contracts and calendars differently, so they are not in mid-season, and therefore are in a different phase of their squad building.

As part of this Pro GBE Bulletin we will present some interesting free agents who qualify for ESC who could be worth having a look at, as well as some examples of transfers that have gone through in the last week, and explain how they happened.

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GBE & ESC Transfers

England

Antonin Kinsky (GK) - 20 - [Slavia Prague - Tottenham] - £12m

Kinsky has already made an impact for Spurs by playing the first leg of the EFL Cup semi-final against Liverpool and keeping a clean sheet against one of the more fearsome attacking teams in the world.

It is a potentially excellent pickup by Spurs, despite Kinsky not yet making a senior international appearance, he played for a team who had European competition, which meant that he sailed through the 15pt barrier to get a GBE, as you can see in our graphic below (paid subscribers only).

Interestingly, he only played 30 times for Slavia, having been on loan to Pardubice last season, so he is very inexperienced, but clearly shows great potential.