The GBE & ESC lowdown on the Winter Window: England

Who required work permits, and who need to use ESC slots to sign their players in the Premier League and EFL?

This is always an important analysis as we see what clubs have been able to do from a foreign recruitment perspective.

Recruitment teams have adapted over the years and with very few changes in the latest set of GBE regulations from the FA, clubs will have been able to have confidence in the markets that they have been researching and making contacts in for years now.

The general patterns that we have come to expect in transfer windows still seem to hold. The amount of business done gets more sizeable in each division that you go down, so the least amount of business is done in the Premier League, but the highest amount of money is spent there too.

From a foreign transfer perspective, by far the highest ratio of foreign transfers to domestic transfers is in the Premier League.

Before the analysis begins in earnest, some disclaimers:

• All GBE and ESC calculations are done by myself using my knowledge of the regulations and all information in the public domain. If a team has used exceptions panels or if a player had a hidden nationality or UK passport that I am unaware of, there could be an inaccuracy there.

• Transfermarkt data is used for transfers. If they have missed anything, then I have too.

• The number of undisclosed fees, especially lower down the UK leagues, is making total fees difficult to read anything into, but it is implausible to guess on fees too, so only fees that are known have been used in calculations

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