8 big January signings who arrived & immediately won silverware at their new club
Liverpool, Arsenal and Chelsea are approaching the January transfer window with speculation mounting over whether they’ll make a signing or two to give them a boost in the Premier League title race.
Some players spend decades waiting patiently for a trophy that never arrives. For others, it takes a matter of months or even weeks after joining a new club.
We’ve identified eight January signings who went on and lifted silverware by the end of the season.
Jose Antonio Reyes
Arsenal strengthened their squad midway through the historic, unforgettable 2003-04 Invincibles campaign. Highly-rated Spanish winger Reyes was signed from his hometown club Sevilla for a £10million fee.
In just his second appearance for the club, he scored an own goal as the Gunners were defeated in the League Cup semis by Middlesbrough. Things would get better from there, though.
While Reyes was by no means one of the leading lights of Arsene Wenger’s most iconic team, he did play his part in getting them over the line unbeaten in the league with a vital equaliser against Portsmouth and the match-winner against Fulham in their last two away games.
Nemanja Vidic
Regarded by many as the greatest January buy in Premier League history, Vidic signed for Manchester United on Christmas Day 2005 and officially arrived in early January after his work permit went through.
Just over a month later he lifted his first piece of silverware with the club – the first of many.
Ultimately, the Serbian played a fringe role at best in United’s League Cup win that season. Sir Alex Ferguson had opted to bed him in gradually, going with Wes Brom alongside Rio Ferdinand in the semis and final that year.
Vidic was introduced in the 83rd minute at the Millennium Stadium in Cardiff as United saw out their emphatic 4-0 victory over Paul Jewell’s Wigan.
Patrice Evra
Can we copy and paste the entry above?
Evra signed a few days after Evra and was another key cog in the last great, all-conquering Manchester United side built by Fergie.
Jose Mourinho’s Chelsea still reigned supreme at that point but a nine-match winning run in the league from February until April was an early indication that United were back on the up and coming for their crown.
The left-back was actually subbed on alongside Vidic in a late like-for-like double change, with Brown and Mikael Silvestre taken off.
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Olivier Giroud
Only Ashley Cole, Petr Cech, John Terry and Patrick Vieira have won more FA Cups than Giroud. Must be an Arsenal and Chelsea thing.
After lifting three across his five-and-a-half-year stint at Arsenal, Giroud left for London rivals Chelsea in January 2018 and soon added another.
With Diego Costa out the door and Michy Batshuayi and Alvaro Morata misfiring, Giroud immediately endeared himself to Antonio Conte in what was proved an exasperatingly frustrating second season for the Italian coach.
The dashingly handsome Frenchman scored against Hull City and Southampton in the run to the final and was chosen ahead of Pedro and Morata to start at Wembley against Manchester United. He played 89 minutes as Conte’s Blues ran out 1-0 winners thanks to an Eden Hazard penalty.
Juan Cuadrado
Zero goals. Zero assists. Zero impact.
But the Colombian has a Premier League winners medal to his name from one half-season (2014-15) at Chelsea. Alright for some.
In hindsight, they probably should’ve just stuck with what they had in Mohamed Salah, eh?
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Aymeric Laporte
Pep Guardiola’s many doubters in the English pundit sphere were made to eat their words in brutal fashion in the Catalan coach’s second season at Manchester City, following an underwhelmingly trophyless first.
City notched a record 100 points that year and had won 19 and drawn two of their 21 Premier League outings by the time the winter window opened. Guardiola’s first title in English football was basically a formality at that point.
So the guarantee of at least one shiny pot must’ve made the move a no-brainer for Laporte, who arrived for a £57million fee from Athletic Bilbao that January.
But first there was the League Cup. The Spain international officially has it on his honours list, although he didn’t play a minute in the competition – absent from the squad in both legs of the semis against Bristol City and an unused substitute in the final.
Takumi Minamino
A bit of a Laporte situation, it was obvious that whoever Liverpool signed in January 2020 would end up with a Premier League winner’s medal.
Like City before them, Jurgen Klopp’s Reds were absolutely rampant that year. They’d dropped just two points by the time the Japanese winger’s signing was announced in December and they kept up that insane pace until just before the season was hit by the lockdown delay.
Sure enough, Minamino ended the season a Premier League winner as something of a fringe player. He made 10 appearances but failed to score in that weird, sort of anticlimactic post-lockdown run-in.
Luis Diaz
With considerably more of an instant impact for Klopp’s Liverpool than Minamino, Diaz’s arrival gave the Reds exactly the shot in the arm they needed as they competed on four fronts in 2021-22.
They’d threatened to fall away from Manchester City in the title race after suffering a mid-season wobble, but the Colombian’s signing helped them get back on track and push Guardiola’s juggernauts all the way to the final seconds of the final day.
Liverpool’s quadruple dream wasn’t to be as they fell just short in the league and lost narrowly in the Champions League final to Real Madrid.
But they could take solace in winning both domestic cups, having beaten Chelsea on penalties after a pair of goalless draws at Wembley; one more forgettable than the other.
In his first six months on Merseyside, Diaz started three finals and won two. Not bad going, that.