Is Fulham's summer transfer business slower than normal?
We take a look at the data behind Fulham's recent summer activity.
Fulham are the only team in the Premier League not to make a signing this summer, continuing a trend of late business (we hope) under the Khans.
However, is this summer's lack of activity so far worse than normal? We take a look at the data behind our sluggish summer activity.
First signing each summer
Firstly, lets go back and date the first signing each summer since Marco Silva's arrival. Given the COVID disrupted nature of 2020, it doesn't really make sense to go back any further than 2021.
2021: Harry Wilson and Paulo Gazzaniga (24th July 2021)
2022: Joao Palhinha (4th July 2022)
2023: Raul Jimenez (25th July 2023)
2024: Ryan Sessegnon (26th July 2024)
As you can see, Fulham are still broadly in line with what's happened in recent years, although we’re only around nine days away from FFC breaking their own record.
When do we get most business done?
Fulham tend to spread their business throughout the summer, with almost a three-way split between July, August and then Deadline Day.
The fact we leave nearly a third of our transfers to the final day of the window feels incredibly risky, but Tony Khan has openly said for years how he believes there is money to be saved and gems to be found by saving business until the final few hours.
Of course, not all summer transfer windows need the same amount of business. The two summers with the lowest amount of incoming transfers have also been the two summers where the first signing has been made latest.
Obviously we don't know how many signings Fulham are looking to make, but given that we have had no major outgoings yet, it seems unlikely that we're going to be signing any more than five or six players. Therefore a line similar to 21/22 and 24/25 feels likely.
Each season however has had a remarkably similar pattern of activity date-wise. The first few arriving towards the end of July, a smattering in August as the season starts and then a final flurry on Deadline Day.
One of the interesting findings from this review is that there’s a pretty stark difference when you look at money spent, instead of number of signings.
August sees a 63% increase in transfer spend compared to July. Seeing as we’ve already established that we sign a similar number of players in each of these three parts of the window, this means that August is historically when the marquee signings have been made.
Conversely, at an average transfer fee of less than £3m, Deadline Day is when we check out the yellow labels. We plug gaps in the squad with the out of favour (and sometimes out of date) players in the market; it’s a Tony Khan trademark. In fact, out of our nine Deadline Day deals, seven of them have been loanees or free transfers and going through a list of names that includes: Layvin Kurzawa, Domingos Quina and Dan James, it doesn’t tend to be the day where we sign difference makers.
Takeaways
Our overall aim when devising this piece was just to chart out whether this summer was an outlier or actually broadly similar to years gone by. I think we can safely conclude it's the latter, although only a week or two would have to pass for this summer to become notable.
The noise around Fulham's lack of activity does feel louder than usual on social media, although I do think the fact there is no World Cup or Euros means there is greater focus on what Fulham are and aren’t doing.
Additionally, I think the early Club World Cup transfer window distorted the market slightly, with more early summer business conducted than ever before.
This means that the chains of transfer activity are operating earlier than usual. However, Fulham fortunately didn't have any players pinched and therefore aren't trying to replace players that have been sold.
However, the wider point is that Fulham do appear to move slower than our rivals to sign players. In recent seasons, we've seen how a lack of pre-season has meant that new signings aren't able to make as much of an impact on their first season at the club. It will be interesting to see whether Emile Smith Rowe and Joachim Andersen's performances improve by virtue of being fully integrated with the side.
Given Marco Silva’s almost annual complaint about summer transfer business (which hasn’t happened yet) - it’s clear that this is not something he approves of. His comments at the end of last season about the plan he put to the board got us excited that this window might signal a new, ambitious, forward-thinking Fulham. Unfortunately, this hasn’t yet played out and is another reason why fans have been so displeased. It’s the hope that kills you.
On the other hand, given that all four seasons under his stewardship have been successful, late business has clearly not held back the potential of the squad too much. If these numbers are anything to go by, strap in for August, that’s when Tony will get his dad’s card out.
Contrarian take - I like this year’s strategy of shoring up the existing team. It’s boring but seems smart to me. I would guess this is also what Marco wants. I do wonder, would be interesting if you and Dan want to have some more fun with data, to see how the club’s - “wait to the last minute strategy” - stacks up against other teams approaches to the window. Are they getting more value? You could just use Transfrmrkt values to look at before and after to see if Fulham is actually saving money, getting more talent through this strategy. I am skeptical but who knows?
I don’t really care about Tony’s comments indicating that there are gems to be found towards the end of the window. The less time players have to be together prior to the season, the less cohesive the unit will be playing together. The board are clearly taking advantage of Silva and I quite frankly don’t know why he continues to stay and deal with the nonsense, though I’m happy he does.