Six Premier League teams that paid the price for not investing in January

Premier League title-chasers Arsenal and Liverpool have made the bold call not to make any signings in the January transfer window. Will they regret not strengthening?

Liverpool still look in a very healthy state under Arne Slot, but will fighting on four fronts come to bite?

Arsenal, meanwhile, are looking light up front after Gabriel Martinelli joined Bukayo Saka and Gabriel Jesus in the treatment room.

The failure to land Ollie Watkins or another striker might come to define the latter half of the Gunners’ 2024-25 campaign.

We’ve taken a look at one club from each of the last six seasons who paid the price for not reinforcing their squad in the winter window.

Arsenal – 2018-19

After a record nineteen consecutive seasons of Champions League football, Arsenal fans were in the uncomfortable position of getting accustomed to Europa League football in the latter days of Arsene Wenger’s reign.

But after a tricky start with back-to-back defeats to Manchester City and Arsenal, Unai Emery made a solid start (bouncing back with seven successive league wins) and a return to Europe’s most prestigious cup competition looked on the cards.

The Arsenal board didn’t heed the warning of a humbling 5-1 defeat to Liverpool in late December, a game that exposed the limitations within Emery’s squad, and a lack of January reinforcements ultimately proved costly.

Emery’s Gunners actually enjoyed a decent run of form through late winter into spring, but they were running on fumes by the end as four defeats from the last seven games saw them end up fifth, just one point behind a Tottenham team that were there for the taking. Ouch.

A 4-1 defeat to Chelsea in the Europa League rubbed further salt into their wounds. It would ultimately take Arsenal another four years and a complete rebuild to make it back into the Champions League.

Leicester City – 2019-20

Some particularly fanciful corners of the football pundit sphere talked up another miraculous Leicester City title charge in 2019-20 after an eight-match winning streak from October through ’til December.

But a 4-0 defeat to Jurgen Klopp’s eventual champions on Boxing Day precipitated a major decline. Leicester picked up fewer points in the second half of the season than the likes of Burnley, Everton and Sheffield United.

In the end, they finished fifth after winning just two of 10 games in the post-lockdown period. Manchester United had leapfrogged them, having been massively boosted by the late January addition of Bruno Fernandes.

A valuable lesson in there for the Leicester hierarchy. Surely they’d heed it…

Leicester City – 2020-21

…Oh, for f-

Deja vu for Leicester City supporters.

After shaking off the disappointment of the season before, Rodgers’ side made a similarly strong start to the weird behind-closed-doors 2020-21 campaign.

Leicester spent 36 of 38 gameweeks up in the top four… falling out for the only two that mattered with back-to-back defeats to Chelsea (who finished a point ahead in fourth; devastating) and Tottenham.

Once again, an added mid-season boost might have made all the difference.

That year they did at least get their revenge on Chelsea with victory in the FA Cup final, but their current position as precarious yo-yo strugglers can be traced back to their failure to qualify for the Champions League that year.

How much money might the club have saved in the long run if they’d only invested that January?

READ NEXT: 12 January signings that changed their club’s season: Fernandes, Van Dijk…

TRY A QUIZ: Can you name the 20 most expensive January transfers in Premier League history?

Manchester United – 2021-22

Unlike Leicester City in the seasons before, Manchester United weren’t flying high before falling away.

Their poor form in the opening months of the season cost Ole Gunnar Solskjaer his job, while their issues in 2021-22 can probably be levelled at the unbalancing influence of late summer signing Cristiano Ronaldo.

But nor was the season a write-off come January. They’d made it to the Champions League knockout stages and were a not-unassailable four points (with two games in hand) behind fourth-place Arsenal.

Adding players – particularly fresh legs to counteract the increasingly immobile Ronaldo – might have saved their season.

Interim coach Ralf Rangnick had even suggested potential targets. Luis Diaz made an immediate impact in Liverpool’s quadruple push, while Julian Alvarez went on to win the treble with Manchester City.

As it was, they suffered limp exits in the Champions League and FA Cup and succumbed to their lowest points tally of the Premier League era.

READ: Revisiting Ralf Rangnick’s 3 Man Utd transfer targets from January 2022

Tottenham – 2022-23

Technically speaking, Tottenham did make a signing in the 2022-23 winter window.

But you can just imagine Antonio Conte’s face as Daniel Levy told him their big Deadline Day addition was… Jude Soonsup-Bell, a Chelsea academy player on a free.

The youngster never made an appearance for Tottenham’s first team and was offloaded after 18 months. He’s now playing his football in the Spanish third tier.

A classic Conte story, this one.

The vibes always felt off in the Italian’s first full season in charge of Spurs, but while performances were unconvincing, he actually had them up around the Champions League places right up until his extraordinary rant and subsequently unavoidable departure.

The wheels inevitably fell off following Conte’s exit, as five defeats from the last eight matches saw Spurs fall to eighth.

They failed to even qualify for the Conference League, but might they have made the top four with January reinforcements?

We wouldn’t be surprised if things turn similarly sour at title-chasing Napoli in the coming weeks, given their failure to land a replacement for star forward Kvicha Kvaratskhelia. Grab the popcorn.

Liverpool – 2023-24

In fairness, Liverpool only added Federico Chiesa (two starts and 280 minutes played in all competitions) in the summer.

And their squad’s not looking too shabby now, is it?

And the January 2024 window was pretty quiet on all fronts as their title rivals Manchester City and Arsenal also failed to add any reinforcements.

The summer prior, Liverpool had spent over a hundred million on a complete midfield rebuild – business that’s proven a masterstroke.

Klopp was denied his perfect send-off as the Reds suffered an unmitigated injury crisis, with talisman Mohamed Salah returning from AFCON with a hamstring tear and a bunch of kids with negligible first-team experience called upon in the Carabao Cup final.

Might they have got over the line with a bit more depth? Even a half-season loan or two? We’ll never know but we can’t blame any Liverpool fans who still look back and wonder ‘what if?’