An eventful transfer window

Steve Bruce is a self confessed transfer windowphobe and the events of the last four weeks will have tested his patience to the limit.

A window in which Bruce was hoping to bring in one player and let no one leave, didn’t pan out as planned.

The first player out was Kevin Kilbane, who had fallen down the pecking order to third choice left back and lacked the pace to move up to the left wing spot. With his contract up at the end of the season a fee of around 500K seemed a good move for WIgan.

The next move was the one which shocked the Wigan fans, although it wasn’t entirely unexpected. Wilson Palacios’s move to struggling Spurs might not have been to the club we expected to him to leave for and plenty of fans, myself included were unhappy at the club sanctioning the move.

What appears to have been a blessing, is the willingness of Mr Whelan to spend most of the reputed 14 million from this sale in a fragile fianacial economy on bringing in new players.

The window only really kicked in for Wigan in the last ten days.

Heskey left for Villa when everyone, including Steve Bruce was saying he would stay until the end of the season. Wigan moved quickly to seal a replacement, bringing Mido in on loan and securing the signing of England under 21 international Ben Watson, as a midfield repalcement for Palacios. This coupled with the confirmation of the signing of Columbian striker Rodellaga, made the squad seem a lot stronger.

Today’s moves, seeing the departures of Taylor and Camara on permenant and loan deals respectively, has been overshadowed by the record signing of Charles N’Zogbia.Six million pounds seems a lot of money for the left winger but his pedigree is there for all to see.

So all in all five of the first team squad left during January at a rumoured total cost of £20,000,000, two of whom could be described as key players and four players in at a total of £12,500,000.

Looking at the players themselves with the exception of Wilson all the deals out seem to be good business and those coming in are as good as those leaving, if not better.

The biggest event however in my opinion was the none move of Luis Antonio Valenca. This guy is in my opinion, quite simply the best player to ever pull on a Latics shirt and whilst the deal for him to go to Man Utd at the end of the season is rumoured to be complete, an in form Valencia may be the difference to whether we qualify for Europe or not.