Records Are Broken in The Championship: The January Window Reviewed
Using the lens of The GBE Expert Hub, what went down in GBE/ESC circles in January, and why?
In a similar way to recruitment teams all over the country, I have had time to take stock of all of the moving and shaking over the transfer window in the English mens’ leagues.
I will definitely be covering Scotland and the women's leagues as well in this month, but they deserve their own depth and detailed analysis as the picture is very different to the English mens’ games.
As our first time covering a transfer window as both a content platform and as a consultant working in foreign recruitment, it felt as though every day there was something new to look at.
This is my attempt at consolidating some of the key points, and bringing together the data from a top-line to produce some kind of actionable insights for you, whatever your role in the game.
Overall headline figures: Brexit has not meant a reduction in football immigration
One of the things that always surprises me when running the figures of the quantity of incomings is the consistency of the pattern between the different English leagues. The order of the number of transfers, this includes loan deals, always flows like a waterfall on the way down the leagues with the Premier League doing far less business than any other league, but then the Championship, League One, and League Two always follow on in order.
It was a fairly busy window by Premier League standards though, the second busiest in terms of incomings since Brexit. The Championship experienced their busiest window since 2016, we will delve into the potential reasons for this in the Championship section.
League One actually had a slightly quieter window than usual, indeed, the trend since Brexit is to see fewer and fewer transfers in January in League One, to the tune of around 10%. A lot of activity took place in League Two, but this is more par for the course, with January 2024 actually being something of an anomaly.
It is getting increasingly difficult though to read much into the amount of money spent by clubs in transfer fees though. The number of deals that are going through with undisclosed fees is growing, and, whilst understandable, is certainly frustrating for people in my line of work! (Please won’t somebody think of the analysts!?)
From the fees published though, this was a record breaking winter window in many ways.
There were only two PL deals that were undisclosed, so we can be pretty confident in the figures there. It looks as though it was the third biggest spend in January over the last decade, this was fuelled by Manchester City spending big on Omar Marmoush, Nico Gonzalez, Abdukodir Khusanov, and Vitor Reis, the four biggest transfers of the window.
Meanwhile, it was a record breaking window in the Championship and in League One. This is even despite 22 Championship signings being reported as undisclosed, albeit the majority of them weren’t big money deals. In fact, the biggest deals of the window in the second tier were domestic, with Tom Cannon moving from Leicester to Sheffield United breaking the 10m Euro barrier, and Morgan Whittaker moving north to Middlesbrough from Plymouth also costing a packet. Altogether there were 28 transfers that were reported with a fee in the Championship.
28 is also the number of League One incomings that were reported as undisclosed, but even so, the reported 9m Euro spend was huge by League One terms. Again, this was mainly fuelled by domestic forwards moving, Joe Taylor moving to Huddersfield was the biggest deal, and Sam Smith’s move to Wrexham was also a big fee for a League One club. We will touch on Wycombe’s business later on.
It is fairly unusual for fees to be spent in League Two, so having two GBE deals completed for fees paid out is worth reporting on, and we will look in detail at those deals by Grimsby and Notts County in the League Two section. It is perhaps worth noting in passing that 66 of the 134 L2 deals were loans. The reliance on loans in the lower leagues is an interesting one, who gets the best end of the loan deals?
Moving into the more specific area of analysing the GBE and ESC transfers in the Premier League and EFL we can see how the incomings broke down.
71% of Premier League business in January involved transfer deals that involved a work permit, but straight GBEs were a lot more common than the use of an ESC slot in the top league.
This is flipped the other way around in the EFL, where ESC slots are used more regularly than straight GBEs. This is mostly as a result of the quality of player required to hit the 15 point threshold, and how that marries to the standard of the leagues.
The percentages of domestic transfers conducted in the EFL is, in part, down to the number of loans that are struck in this window. Many of the loans deals signed in the summer are broken and then re-sent on loan elsewhere, and many new loans are struck in this window too.
Also, the vast majority of leagues worldwide run the same August-May calendar, which means that there is a paucity of free agents for EFL clubs to consider, which is important when transfer fees are often outside of the budget of most of the clubs in the bottom two leagues especially.
Premier League: Work permits over domestic talent for the fifth year running
Concentrating on the top division, we have seen that this window saw the majority of deals required a work permit in January.
How this has affected the overall 2024/25 season is that it means for the fifth consecutive season, that more transfer incomings have been foreign than domestic. However, without taking undisclosed fees into account, it is the first time in a decade that more Premier League money has been spent domestically than abroad.
The number of work permits given this season has been less than 100 for the first time in a couple of years, albeit the usage of ESCs has increased form last season, which is to be expected.
Five of the top ten deals made this season were domestic transfers, albeit only two of the players involved are for England qualified players. Only two of these deals were made in January, but that does include the highest fee paid, for Omar Marmoush. It is interesting that the highest fees paid this season are for players who are 25 and 26, players just entering their peak years.
Breaking down PL signings by their banding can demonstrate the key trends around where players are being sourced from.
As one would expect, with the Premier League remaining as the pinnacle of league club football as a whole, certainly where the majority of the clubs earn great sums of money, the majority of the players are coming from Band 1 i.e. Bundesliga, Serie A, La Liga, and Ligue 1, commonly referred to as the Big Five.
However, there has been an increase in the number of players bought from Band 3, and also Band 5 this season. The infrastructure of PL clubs and their relationships with South American and MLS clubs is becoming more reliable, and with Band 5, the ESC slots are allowing PL clubs to be more experimental in this area.
The Championship: No room at the inn for many Championship clubs
This January window has seen something new. It has been 18 months since the ESC regulations dropped into Championship recruitment teams’ laps and told them that they effectively had four wild card slots in their squads that they could use.
Over this time, recruitment teams have taken up this challenge with relish, and whilst the vast majority haven’t filled the four slots, this is the window in which the first clubs have really started bumping their heads against the ceiling of the ESC limitations.
Norwich City found a way around it when signing Matej Jurasek. This maneouvre may have set a precedent that we will now see repeated in window after window as long as these regulations are in place.
Indeed, Portsmouth were able to use that method in order to bring in Adil Aouchiche late in the window as well, having had their initial application called into question.
Other Championship clubs exited the window with all four slots filled, but with the expectation that they can convert at least one of those players into a GBE, and therefore free a slot for the summer. Other clubs may have to sell or release players in those slots to use them in the summer.
The spending in the January window by Championship clubs took the overall 2024/25 spending to record highs, and this does not include the 22 undisclosed transfers. 107 work permits were given out for the deals done this season, up 44 (77%) from last year.
For the second year in three, more money has been spent by Championship clubs in foreign countries than domestically. 62% of transfers in involved domestic players, but this is the lowest percentage that we have ever seen in the second tier.
The chart above demonstrates the situation in the Championship as regards work permits granted. We have to remember as well that only a small handful of clubs have maximised the use of their slots, however, every club in the Championship has now used at least one of their slots this season, with the majority filling two or more.
When breaking down the bands used, it is perhaps reflective of the quality of the league that more Band 1 signings have been made. Some of these players are bit part or reserve players, and some are on loan, but there has been a substantial increase in the number of Band 1 players coming into the Championship.
There have also been substantial increases in Band 4 and Band 5 moves. This is almost purely down to the use of ESC slots. We will analyse the leagues in question later in the piece but it will have missed no-one’s attention the number of Scandinavian players moving to the Championship in January.
League 1 & League 2: Is a change a coming?
There weren’t a huge number of GBE and ESC transfers in League One in January, as we saw above, but that was prinicpally because the clubs with the biggest budgets has used most of their slots in the summer 2024.
L1 and L2 clubs only receive a maximum of 2 slots to use for ESC, and for a player to pass the 15pt mark for a GBE, they either need to have good international credentials, played in continental competition, or played regularly in a Band 1-3 league, most players who fit that criteria don’t tend to move to League One or below.
However, as we can see in the chart below, there have been far more work permits given out to League One clubs than ever before. Also, spending in this tier is massively up, and, for once, the January spending can’t be blamed on Birmingham City.
The 52m euro spent on fees, not including undisclosed fees, is now at least 7 or 8 times more than has ever been spent in a season of the third tier. Whilst Birmingham are responsible for a great deal of that, Huddersfield spent over 3m on a player in January, and Wrexham spent over 2m on a striker as well.
Wycombe are the most interesting case in League One though. Under new ownership, the Chairboys identified two Danish players, playing in Norway and Sweden, and were happy to pay fees of just under 2m Euro in total to bring both of them in. This used up both of their ESC slots, but Magnus Westergaard and Anders Hagleskjaer could help get Wycombe into the Championship, and that is the gamble that Wycombe have gone for.
The exciting news from a work permit perspective in League Two came from Grimsby and Notts County, again.
Both clubs had delved into the ESC market previously, indeed, four of the five ESC uses in the history of League Two have been from these two clubs. The recent arrivals, Geza David Turi and Mai Traore, follow in that new tradition of identifying players in unusual places for League Two clubs to look, and taking a chance on them.
I won’t go on too long about this as it is a real hobby horse of mine, but surely the risk taken on a Turi or Traore is worthwhile. We have seen, especially this season, how if a player is successful, like last season’s January signing Alassana Jatta, how much he is now worth to Notts County.
Whilst Jason Dadi Svanthorsson hasn’t necessarily been as impressive as that, he is definitely contributing positively to the Grimsby first team, who have steered way clear of any relegation fears this season and could yet get promoted. It would surprise me if Grimsby broke the bank for Svanthorsson, in terms of wage budget, and the same with Turi now.
This is now the mission with the consultancy arm of The GBE Expert Hub, finding players in those lesser shopped areas that can make a difference to clubs.
There have been more deals sourced from Bands 1-6 in League One than ever before, and whilst League Two hasn’t shown signs of catching up until this point, more clubs will begin to take notice of what Notts County and Grimsby have done.
There are so many markets that have so much untapped potential, for very little (in the grand scheme of things) start up cost.
Hot to shop: Where did English clubs target for their recruitment this January?
We have seen how recruitment has looked in the domestic leagues, but we can now spend some time briefly assessing where clubs targeted their recruitment.
Firstly, there are the old favourites. France and Italy’s top divisions were the most shopped by English clubs in the window. Ligue 1 is actually the most shopped league by the Premier League going back to 2014 in my records, and probably of all time. Alex Stewart actually wrote an interesting piece on Ligue 1 recruitment recently, linked here.
The emergence of the MLS on the global market is demonstated here as the relationship between the States and England as a football trading partnership continues. Who knows if tariffs will be applied here too in future…
NO1 is Norway’s Eliteserien, which saw a bigger than usual amount of activity due to the ESC rules. Indeed, Denmark are next on the chart, and it is unusual to see Band 4 and Band 5 leagues feature on this graphic.
L1 is Germany’s Bundesliga, and the remaining leagues that saw three or more exports into England are the Eredivisie (Band 2), the Primeira Liga (Band 2), and Brazil’s Serie A (Band 3).
The influence of the ESC regulations cannot be denied when looking at the Bands in which players have been identified for transfer into England. We will compare this to Scotland when the study into Scotland has been done, as the SFA doesn’t have an ESC policy.
Outside of Band 1, Bands 4 and 5 are the most popular leagues to use to buy or loan from. Band 3 has seen an increase from previous windows, but Band 6 is still a difficult market to use.
This is also reflected if you divide the cohort into regions (Australia has been put into Asia here).
The market continues to be dominated by Europe, despite Brexit, and it is minor European leagues that have overtaken the Big 5 in terms of player quantity, if not the amount of money spent.
There is still work to be done in certain regions if they want their players to be directly marketable into England, but, of course, part of that is down to risk management on the part of the English clubs.
It is also notable that there is no Africa represented here. The hurdles of getting African players directly into England are still seemingly too high. We will investigate whether that is indeed the case in a series of pieces in March that will focus on the continent of Africa and its relationship with the UK.
The use of Band 6
We have mentioned that Band 6, i.e. the rest of the world, is still a tough market to buy from.
The players seen in the diagram here represent a few different tactics in terms of how to use Band 6. This should be a focus of many clubs as it is, in my opinion, the best way to get return on investment, and to win your targets through lack of competition.
Sheffield United apparently identified Nwachukwu through some AI usage, he was a player that we at The GBE Expert Hub suggested to a club this winter as well.
Turi qualified for an ESC for Grimsby through his UEFA competition minutes, Andresson through his U21 caps, and Kayi Sanda had spent time in Ligue 2 (Band 4) before relegation with Valenciennes.
Rento Takaoka was a really opportunistic move from Southampton as he is yet to turn 18 but is on a pre-contract after starring for Japan U17s.
Jaydon Banel is a difficult one to classify. Transfermarkt register him as Ajax U21, which does make him Band 6, but his couple of Eredivisie appearances and UEFA minutes probably put him as Band 2. Maybe he is more half and half, so perhaps Band 4…that’s a maths joke for those of you who read this far.
We are concentrating a lot on Band 6 recruitment between February and May as a team. If this is something that interests you as an agent, club or club owner, then please get in touch. We have a new email address at gbeexperthub@gmail.com.
Really interesting and comprehensive piece of research! Really interested to know why there’s been such an increase in fees being logged as undisclosed. And thanks for the plug ☺️