Arsenal, Chelsea, Liverpool and Man Utd have all delved into the transfer market this summer but some clubs have had a lot more success than others, this is a look at the teams on the move and those been left behind.
Of the four teams its obvious that Man Utd and Liverpool are the teams with the deepest pockets this year but will that improvement on the financial investment side translate into better fortunes on the pitch. A run down of the top fours transfers in and out may give an indication of who will improve next year but as always money does not always return league points....just ask any Newcastle fan.
First of is Arsenal, who finished a disappointing fourth last year by there standards and thier closed season activity so far has given very little optimism that they can improve on that.
Arsenal
In: Bakari Sagna Eduardo da Silva and Lukasz Fabianski
Out: Matthew Connolly, Arturo Lupoli, Thierry Henry,
Jeremie Aliadiere and Mart Poom.
Now this team is probably the biggest talking point of the close season, their lack of funds in the transfer season makes it clear that the cost of the new stadium will take a long time to absorb, but in having Wenger as the manager makes this possible as he is the master at picking up young bargains and turning them into either Arsenal legends or making a decent profit on them but his choices this year seem a little bit out of character, Da Silva is no spring chicken so if he does turn into a superstar it would be one of his better coups but its unlikely.
Unless something major happens at Arsenal between now and the start of the season Arsenal will be a much lesser team and could be actually overtaken by their free spending neighbours Spurs.
Chelsea
In: Florent Malouda Steve Sidwell Tal Ben Haim and Claudio Pizarro
Out; Khalid Boulahrouz, Geremi and Yves Ma Kalambay
The Blues are by far the biggest free spending club in the history of football but surprisingly quite this year...could Roman be finally be becoming bored of his play thing, Florent Malouda is the major signing but is only a replacement for Robben and the only other notable addition is Claudio Pizarro who arrived on a free transfer. Chelsea seem more like a team in sleep mode, surly if Roman was still interested this is the one year that he would have invested heavily to bring the title back to Stamford but instead it seems he is happy to let it all coast along till he becomes interested again or perhaps the manager he really wants is not available yet.
Man United
In; Anderson,Owen Hargreaves and Luis Nani
Out; Phil Marsh, Floribert Ngalula,and Daniel Rose
The biggest spenders and the money seems like a lot of it has been spent wisely, Anderson and Nani are investments in the future there to replace Scholes and Giggs,this is not an improvement its maintenance to replace their aging stars, Hargreaves and Carrick will compete to replace Keane but they will have a hard job, these two players are good but not good enough to give Utd that all important controlling midfield and when they play the top teams like Liverpool this year expect the other teams to be able to convert their dominance into points, but if Man Utd can complete the transfer of Teves then Man Utd can make up for this loss in midfield and would be an improved team by being able to take their chances, they may not have the best defense but if Teves joins their ranks then they will score more goals than most teams in Europe and must be favourites to at least clinch the Premiership title once again and if they get lucky and that dodgy defence holds up could improve on their European record, but they really need to sign Tevez to improve on last years team.
Liverpool
In;Ryan Babel,Yossi Benayoun, Ryan Crowther, Andrei Voronin, Fernando Torres, Krisztian Nemeth and Andras Simon.
Out; Jerzy Dudek , Craig Bellamy, Luis García and Boudewijn Zenden.
I have left this to last because this is the team with the biggest changes and the biggest challenges in most likely hood the most improved team of the top four, they have always had the best defence but this year its been an all out assault on attacking options, of course its easy to improve when you are so far behind compared to Man Utd and Chelsea but Liverpool have definitely spent the money where it was needed most and that is in in attack. Liverpool have always had a great defence but putting the ball away has been the problem for the last two managers which is why Rafa Benitez has gone all out this year by buying all attacking players. Liverpool have strenghtened all attacking options but for Liverpool to become a true threat to Man utd then a couple of positions still have to to be filled, first of all we still need a right winger or else Gerrard may waste his talents there again for another season, and with all our great new attacking options it mean our defence is going to be more busy than ever now that we are not playing defensive football and that means we must plug up our one Achilles heel, the left back position, Riise is a great player going forward but in defence he leaves a lot to be desired.
So this is how i see the season unfolding, Arsenal will be lucky to be in the top four, Chelsea will always compete for the title with Roman`s millions, Man Utd will be very hard to overcome if they do sign Tevez which is very likely and Liverpool are a very unknown prospect just because so much rebuilding has gone on, but if Rafa can
get his team to gel quickly in the season and still be in contention by Christmas then i think it is more than likely that Liverpool will add to their massive league title haul.
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