The Premier League season is over, the transfer window is open for business and England’s traditional topsides are set to jockey again for premium talent entering the 2020-2021 campaign.
While the top four was occupied by the usual suspects (Liverpool, Manchester City, Manchester United, Chelsea), the likes of Leicester City and Tottenham ensured that it wasn’t just a straight processional to all of the league’s European places for the group known as the “Big Six.”
The richest six clubs in the land did all eventually wind up securing European places, with Arsenal, despite an eighth-place finish, winning the FA CUPto book a Europa League berth.
The added fixtures and trophy ambitions mean all will be retooling to some degree–and some have already taken significant steps forward in preparation for next season.
The financial complications brought on by the coronavirus pandemic could surely play a role in the levels of spending, though not all are severely impeded or hindered.
Here’s how all six clubs figure to be approaching the summer transfer window, a unique and extended one that runs through Oct. 5 due to the effects of the pandemic on the league’s operations (in reverse order of 2019-2020 finish):
Philippe Coutinho to Arsenal:
Mikel Arteta has an energy and a sense of direction that suggests a plan is in place and has a chance of succeeding. Victory over Manchester City in the FA Cup semifinal represented as good a performance and result in a major game as Arsenal has enjoyed in years. And perhaps most promisingly, there is a crop of exciting young players who have played at least semi-regularly this season.
Bukayo Saka is probably the pick of them, but Eddie Nketiah, Joe Willock, Gabriel Martinelli, Reiss Nelson and William Saliba all offer hope for the future.
Atletico’s Thomas Partey would be available if Arsenal can match his €50 million release clause, but if that is too much, then Porto’s Danilo Pereira is a cut-price option.
In the front the Gunners have targeted the Barcelona outcast Coutinho, and the Brazilian is also eager to make his move to team where he could find the game time which is required.
Skriniar to Tottenham:
“The Special One” has already made his mark on the north London side and under his supervision, the club has managed to qualify for the European journey.
Mourinho is concerned with shape and mentality; his Manchester United side had the lowest distance-run stats in the league. His is a very different style of football to Pochettino’s, more conservative, more based around a low block.
That would suggest the need for a major overhaul of personnel, which for two decades has been the Mourinho way. Since Porto, he has not been a manager who has built on a budget. Yet clearly here that is what he will have to do.
The period when Vertonghen and Toby Alderweireld gave Spurs the most reliable central defense in the league feels like a long time ago. Alderweireld is 31 and so should still have three or more years at the highest level, although he struggled at times last season.
This term Mourinho and his club have identified the Inter Milan prodigy Milan Skriniar to fill the gap in the heart of the defense and rumors are there both Tottenham and Inter will sit for the meeting for the actual transfer.
Thiago to Liverpool:
Until February, this was a season of extraordinary brilliance from Liverpool. It added the Club World Cup title to its trophy cabinet, and for a time through the late fall and winter played some of the best football ever seen in the Premier League.
Its end to the season was rather less impressive: four defeats in six games before play was suspended that saw it go out of the Champions League and the FA Cup and lose its unbeaten league record (at Watford, of all places); then five wins in nine to round the season off, meaning it missed out on 100 points and the single-season record tally.
Not that many in Liverpool seemed to care Winning the title after 30 years, was all that mattered–and doing so with an 18-point gap over Manchester City and a 33-point gap over Man United and Chelsea certainly requires no further credentials.
It’s been a couple of weeks now since reports first emerged linking Liverpool with Thiago Alcantara, who has told Bayern he wants to leave. He has the benefit of being used to a pressing game, and he would add a more cerebral passing aspect to a Liverpool midfield that remains focused on energy. That, perhaps, indicates a willingness of Jurgen Klopp’s part to begin to evolve or at least diversify the playing style.
Sancho to Manchester United:
Manchester United finished the season third in the Premier League table. It qualified for next season’s Champions League and is the odds-on favorite to win this season’s Europa League.
These are not achievements that would have excited United fans once upon a time, but given how things had been going, they have been welcomed as signs that everything moving in the right direction at Old Trafford.
And there are certainly positive signs. Since arriving at the end of January, Bruno Fernandes has made sense of a squad that had previously appeared utterly incoherent.
But there are also concerns. United didn’t actually play well in any of its last five matches, even if the only defeat was the FA Cup semifinal against Chelsea.
United’s forward line is arguably the strongest area of the squad, but that’s not stopping the club from targeting Jadon Sancho, the 20-year-old former Manchester City youth product who had 17 goals and 16 assists this past season for Borussia Dortmund.
The Bundesliga club’s initial reluctance to sell this summer seems to have been lessened by the realization that prices may drop over the next year, and if anybody is still making marquee signings it may as well take advantage.
Havartz Linked to Chelsea:
None of the Premier League’s “Big Six” has had a season that’s been so hard to assess Chelsea. Frank Lampard took over in difficult circumstances, with Eden Hazard finally departed to Real Madrid and a transfer ban in place.
There were very few expectations and, in that context, to qualify for the Champions League and reach The FA Cup final all while blooding a number of young players, represents success.
Chelsea this season has already roped in the Hakim Ziyech from Ajax and Timo Werner RB Leipzig and they were also after Kai Havartz.
Also, Lampard is not happy with the left full-backs and they are monitoring Ben Chilwell for that spot.