Striker was the name of the game this January as the transfer window closed late last night. The shocking last-minute moves include Fernando Torres moving to Chelsea, with Luis Suarez and Andy Carroll moving to Liverpool. Andy Carroll broke the English transfer fee record at a whopping 35 Million Pounds, which was promptly outdone by a staggering 50 Million Pound fee for Torres.
In addition to these huge money transfer, quite a number of striker-shuffling moves occurred. Darren Bent moved from Sunderland to Aston Villa, John Carew moved from Aston Villa to Stoke, Robbie Keane from Tottenham to West Ham, Edin Dzeko to City, Roque Santa Cruze returned back to Blackburn, and Adebayor moved to Real Madrid.
What does this mean to City? Other than Darren Bent (who scored the winning goal against City a week ago) and Edin Dzeko's acquisition, not all that much. Most of the player movement in the window was merely shuffling decent players between decent teams. We might see some new life in Liverpool with an all new striking force, but with the transfer window closed I still predict a top 4 finish for the blues.
The sad news for City this January is the injury suffered by Adam Johnson. According to Sky Sports, AJ is to miss the next three months through an ankle injury that happened in training. With AJ being injured, Mancini felt uncomfortable letting SWP leave as we could require additional back-up in the wing positions. I hope this means that SWP will receive some playing time the next few months, because if he continues to warm the bench I fear that his career could be coming to a lackluster finish.
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