Man Utd & Chelsea are among clubs pushing to change the transfer window - but it's a waste of time

We’re hardly breaking new ground here, but once again, the Premier League may close its transfer window early next summer following a non-binding agreement reportedly reached by the clubs last week at their first meeting of the season. If all goes to plan, the window will close on 15 August 2025, before the first ball of the next campaign is kicked – just as happened in 2018, before the idea was promptly abandoned after one year. So what’s different this time, and who benefits from the change?

The story, first reported by TalkSport last week and since confirmed by a column in The Sunday Times (paywalled), suggests that Premier League clubs made the agreement but have yet to hold a vote which would ratify it. 14 of the 20 clubs would have to do so for the motion to pass and the change to be made.

One key difference between this proposed change to the transfer window and the one which was so swiftly dropped in 2018 is that it is hoped that the major European leagues will join in. Six years ago, the Premier League went alone and the primary reason the idea was scrapped was the fear that clubs from the other ‘big five’ leagues – France, Germany, Italy and Spain as well as England – would be able to poach players from Premier League clubs in the extra two weeks of negotiating time that they got in their longer windows, although no big moves actually occurred in the end.

According to TalkSport, the Premier League is now in negotiations with big clubs across the continent to secure a collaborative agreement which would see every major leagues’ windows closed early in order to avert the fear of player poaching. There seems to be interest in the Dutch league in joining in, as well, and the slightly smaller leagues in Europe would likely be among those that benefited – it prevents their less wealthy teams from having their players pinched once plans for the season have already been laid.

That said, moving deadline day to just before the start of the season hardly gives immense room for any sense of security. The TalkSport report claims that the “unsettling nature” of those couple of weeks when players are still being traded while football is ongoing are the key driver for clubs wanting to move the dates of the windows, but if you’re preparing for a tilt at the Eredivise title or, perhaps, readying your side for a relegation battle in the Bundesliga, being pushed into selling your best player a couple of days before your first game seems only very slightly better than the same situation occurring a couple of weeks later.

There’s also a reasonable concern that a shorter transfer window will lead to ever shorter negotiations, which could force selling teams – and the players themselves – to make quick decisions, giving them less room to haggle over details of the fee and get a better deal and less time to find other bidders who might make a better offer and push the transfer fee or contract value up, although again, two weeks either way probably won’t make an enormous amount of difference in a world in which every transfer window is already a tornado of last-minute decisions and domino effects.

There’s a further concern, too, in that it would leave even more room for countries elsewhere to muscle in on the transfer market – specifically, Saudi Arabia, which would be given another two weeks to offer enormous golden handshakes to players who may wish to move to the Middle East.

In truth, though, Saudi Arabia already have a later transfer deadline than the major European leagues, as do several other nations such as Turkey, and they have yet to use that apparent advantage to significant effect. Most of the Saudi Pro League’s big-money signings have been ageing players getting one last (very substantial) pay day, and selling clubs are typically well-remunerated for their troubles. The signings of Ivan Toney from Brentford this season and Gabri Veiga from Celta Vigo last summer have been outliers, and players who wish to accept the riches on offer will mostly do so anyway. Again, two additional weeks for Saudi clubs to negotiate compared to their European rivals seems unlikely to significantly change the balance of power. The money will still only speak to those who wish to listen.

So if the pitfalls are probably few and far between, what are the actual benefits of the change? There are likely very few. Transfer teams will have to work even more frantically for a couple of weeks and then get some extra time to rest, and that’s about it – but it seems as though the clubs themselves want this, and would prefer the balance it brings, dividing the off-season and actual season more cleanly.

Really, though, this feels like it’s about clubs like Manchester United and Chelsea, who typically do an immense amount of business every summer, wanting to make things easier for themselves. It perhaps carries some fringe benefits from smaller teams who find it harder to replace their best players at short notice, but the same issues will still arise for them.

If this comes to pass, it’s unlikely that much will change. Perhaps the last week or two of the window will be even more frenetic, which will either be exciting or tiresome according to your preferences. There will be a certain satisfying neatness to the teams being set before the season gets underway, but that’s hardly a valid reason to make a significant change – if, indeed, this change is significant in any way. This feels not like a new era for the business of football, but a matter of shuffling deckchairs on a very expensive cruise liner indeed.