Don’t Panic. Those two words from Douglas Adam’s Hitchhiker’s Guide To The Galaxy finds relevance on transfer deadline day. The rule book, more often than not, is sent flying out the window, and CEOs and managers cave in to expediency and pressure of knowing that the action or inaction in the last few hours till midnight could determine the course of a club’s season. A left-back not bought, or a striker giving the club a shimmy and a feint, could resign a club to relegation. These three clubs have kept Douglas’ words in mind, though, held their nerves and kept the rule book wide open under their sweaty noses, coming off with three of the best deadline day deals of this summer. Here’s T4O’s Srijandeep rating them.
#3 Jack Wilshere
From: Arsenal
To: Bournemouth
Loan
Price: N/A
Jack Wilshere finds himself in the forefront of the Bournemouth battalion. His mean streak has suggested that he likes to play with the bit between his teeth in his time at Arsenal, and when in his prime, there were a few calls on his candidacy as the captain of Arsenal football club. Those halcyon days are over, no longer is it 2011, and no longer is he making Xavi Hernandez run over to him, asking for his jersey, as he inspired the gunners to a memorable 2-1 victory over the paella panderers extraordinaire at the Emirates. This move may make or break the legacy of jack Wilshere, and we can only hope he realises as much as we do.
He’d be deployed, ideally in a 4-4-1-1 formation, with Surman and Lewis Cook and Surman doing most of the midfield dirty work, leaving Wilshere to be played off new acquisition, striker, Mousset, and in a free role, where he’d have the reins to wreck havoc and be the focal point of Bournemouth’s forward momentum. He could take the figurehead of the talisman at Dean Court. With his Arsenal and England future on a knife-edge, he’d look to back himself to have a career-defining season, where he can lay claim, once again as one of the Premier League’s premier midfielders, and consequently go all Roy of the Rovers, saving Bournemouth from the brink of relegation.
#2 Moussa Sissoko
From: Newcastle
To: Tottenham
Transfer
Price: £30m
Moussa Sissoko is the footballing equivalent of the proverbial bull in the china shop. And this bull could be Tottenham’s battering ram this season, one they have been bereft of, without the verticality of Moussa Dembele. He’s a different kind of prospect to handle than Dembele, though. He’ll use his gumption on the ball to ground the opposition midfield to a rubble. While he’s still as susceptible to those lapses of concentration, doubts over his defensive capabilities have been rendered redundant by this transfer.
Eclipsing the costliest player in world football with his rampaging raids, Paul Pogba must have been a wee bit envious of all the limelight hogging, Sissoko did, in the European Championships, with all the subtlety of an Amercian Road Hog (def. a motorist who drives recklessly or inconsiderately, making it difficult for others to pass).
Mauricio Pochettino is a man with a plan, as he will look to coax the same wanton recklessness from Moussa, with Eric Dier and Vincent Wanyama being the chains of the Tottenham midfield. Neither of Christian Eriksen, Dele Ali, or Eric Lamela will have their attacking edge blunted by having to drop deep to carry possession over to the attacking third – they have a runaway freight train now, and perhaps the best central midfield in the English Premier League.
#1 David Luiz
From: Paris Saint-Germain
To: Chelsea
Transfer
Price: £30m
Chelsea Football Club has had more priors of comings and goings than Culture Club in their one-shot, hit number, Karma Chameleon. It’s been like seeing grandpa Simpson being stuck in a revolving door and finding himself back inside the hotel lobby again, with some of their dealings. With about a million players dispatched worldwide on loan spells, showing a criminal lack of vision, and a decadent excess of riches. This transfer of David Luiz, however, may not be ponderous as it may first appear.
Tony Conte will be bent (no, not in that way) to fit David Luiz into his master template of 3-5-2 that won him much accreditation and adulation in Italy, and Walter Mazzarri’s spite (he deems that Tony mooched off his idea after a 1-1 draw at Naples). While Luiz could be deployed as a centre-back, but it’s more likely that he may take a leaf out of Rafa Benitez’s book, and play the mad hatter as a libero or a defensive midfielder, as his central hinge on which the entire tenability of the catenaccio.
This role would make this transfer less of a luxury, and David Luiz less of a liability and more of a talisman.
