Analysis: Liverpool Get Better Value in the January Transfer Window vs Summer Window

Ranking All Liverpool’s Summer Signings vs January Signings (2006-2022)

Ranking All Liverpool’s Summer Signings vs January Signings (2006-2022)

One thing I’ve come to distrust is the idea that there is no value in January. Indeed, my hunch, which I investigated for this piece, was that the January window has been better on average than the summer for Liverpool.

What you don’t want is midseason churn, unless your team is so bad it doesn’t matter about harmony and shared wavelengths.

And it’s hard to buy centre-backs midseason as they don’t get time to adjust to the back-four work that takes months to synch up (it helps if you’re as good as Virgil van Dijk, but even he was at fault for goals and conceded penalties early on. Liverpool have had almost no luck with stopgap centre-backs in January – in 2020/21 two rookies proved better than two more experienced loan signings, as they at least knew the way the club played, amongst other things).

Adding players in the summer usually allows a preseason to adapt, but you can often get one impactful addition in January.

I make it 15 signings made by the Reds in January windows since 2006/07, and 85 in the summer (excluding a lot of cheap kids, and I haven’t assessed the signings from 2022).

Even so, the January signings have on average been a year younger, at just over 23 years old, to just over 24 overall for summer. Three of the January signings were loans, and we can get onto the reasons they failed. On average, the January signings work out as 17.4% more expensive, but twice as successful.

The January window, to my assessment, has a 60% hit-rate for the Reds (players who ranked from successful to elite), versus just 29.1% for the summer signings.

I rated 37.9% of summer signings ‘mixed’, perhaps because the player was good but didn’t get many minutes due to being bought as a reserve (Kostas Tsimikas), or because they started really well before losing their way (Alex Oxlade-Chamberlain, due to injuries).

In the rest of the piece I’ll share my rankings for nearly 100 signings across summer and winter; how much each player cost in 2022 money (using our Transfer Price Index inflation model); and show why I think January has thus far proved the best market for specialised signings.

Before that, it’s also worth nothing that the worst-value signing also occurred in January: Andy Carroll, at £148m in 2022 money, albeit paid for with the £200m+ in 2022 money raised by selling Fernando Torres.

But on average – always vital words – January has been kind, as I will show for paying subscribers. Value is always there, if you can just find it.