Five of the Best – Transfer Deadline Day Deals

The final day of the transfer window can see massive amounts of money change hands as panic grips boardrooms all over the world.

Managers and chairmen do everything they can to sign players they think and hope might make all the difference for the season ahead.

Very often these late deals don’t work too well as they reveal a lack of planning and are done more as a reaction to a poor start to a season or to compensate for losing a star player to another panicking side but every now and then the stars align and a club manages to grab someone special.

Here’s our list of five of the best deadline day deals.

Wayne Rooney

Wayne Rooney had shown flashes of brilliance during his first spell at Everton. Announcing himself to the Premier League with that audacious goal against Arsenal when he was just 16, before further enhancing his reputation with a star performance at Euro 2004.

With just four hours left in the transfer window, Everton accepted a £25.6 million offer from Manchester United for the then 18-year-old Rooney. It was the highest transfer fee ever for a teenager which obviously put a lot of pressure on the young striker but a European hat-trick on his debut and 253 goals over 13 seasons at the club mean that this must rank as one of the top deadline day deals ever.

Luis Suarez

He might have been a nasty piece of work at times but there can be no denying that when he wasn’t suspended Luis Suarez was an awesome striker for Liverpool. Arriving on the final day of the window for a relatively low fee of £22 million, he bagged a very impressive 82 goals in 122 games for the Reds.

Mesut Ozil

Now hang on a minute, I know he’s gets a lot of stick , but a few half arsed performances don’t make Ozil a bad player. Let’s be honest, there’s not many players in the current Arsenal squad who are pulling their weight but Ozil is doing exactly what he was brought in to do; be a supporting player to their attackers. It’s not his fault that Welbeck loses the run of himself when he gets in front of goal, or that Wenger decides he needs to focus on crossing the ball to Giroud to get the goals, even though this has never actually happened or that Wenger thinks that the best way for Lacazette to acclimatise to the Premier League is to not play in it. In the 119 Premier League games he has played since joining the Gunners, Ozil has had a hand in 65 goals and won three FA Cups. Oh and he scored this absolute beaut.

Mesut Ozil reached 50 Premier League assists faster than any other player in the competition’s history 🪄

This Arsenal move was 🤤#YaGunnersYa pic.twitter.com/6asNDtydv3

— Goal (@goal) January 25, 2021

Claude Makelele

You know a player is good when he has a whole playing position named after him. I bet there are kids out there who have never seen Claude Makelele play who know what it means when pundits talk about teams needing someone “in that Makelele role”. Teams needing a player in that role is practically a football cliché at this stage and you know why? Because every team needs a player who can do what he did. Arriving on deadline day from Real Madrid in 2003 he went on to help the Blues win two League titles, two League Cups and the FA Cup.

Carlos Tevez

One of the stranger ones on the list. Carlos Tevez arrived at West Ham alongside compatriot Javier Mascherano and, with all respect to West Ham, it had people wondering. How did West Ham manage to get not one, but two top class Argentina internationals? The deal was shrouded in mystery and initially the pair struggled to adapt to life in England. Tevez eventually managed to force his way in to the starting line up and seven goals in 10 games, including a winner on the last day against Manchester United, kept the Hammers in the Premier League.