Today was a huge day for the Premier League as they reached a decision to move the summer transfer window deadline up in 2018. Next year, the transfer window will no longer be open once league play has commenced. A 2/3 majority of clubs, 14 in total, voted to move deadline day up to August 9, two days before the regular season begins.
Of course, you’ll still have that period in mid August until the end of the month where their window is closed, but it remains open for the other leagues in Europe. Obviously this puts the PL clubs at a disadvantage, as they could still lose players, but not replace them during this period.
According to Sky Sports News: “Manchester United and Manchester City were among the five clubs that voted against bringing the transfer deadline forward, understands.”
“Swansea, Crystal Palace and Watford were the other Premier League sides to go against the two-thirds majority, with Burnley abstaining from voting altogether.”
It will be very interesting to get United Manager Jose Mourinho’s take on this development when he holds his weekly news conference later today. You know that he will certainly be asked about it. United have become a summer shopping only club, having bought just one player, and that was a reserve goalkeeper, in the past three January transfer windows.
Mourinho is a guy that likes to get all his acquisitions done as early as possible, so he is actually in favor of this idea, although his team was not. The Sky article goes on to mention that Man City’s Pep Guardiola and Swansea City’s Paul Clement were in the same boat on this issue- in favor of early closure, and at odds with how their clubs voted.
Now that England has taken this bold step, will others follow suit? Watch this space.
Paul M. Banks runs The Sports Bank.net and TheBank.News, which is partnered with News Now and Minute Media. Banks, a former writer for the Washington Times, NBC Chicago.com and Chicago Tribune.com, currently contributes regularly to WGN CLTV and Chicago Now.
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