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Who was hot and who was not in the January Transfer Window 2012?

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Not

Tottenham Hotspurs

Not content with picking on Manchester United as the side that didn’t even reach lukewarm in January – it would be unfair, Fergie isn’t keen on the window of rash decisions – and deciding that Manchester City’s lack of spending is counterbalanced by their superfluous spending of previous windows, I have settled with Tottenham Hotspurs as my team of 0 degrees for transfer activity.

Whilst it would be unfair to simply categorise Spurs as the men with the chilly willies purely because they spent not a single penny on transfer fees – neither of the top three did – the nature of their signings, further highlighted by the transfer activity out of the club, are rather lacklustre.

In Louis Saha, a man who has scored a grand total of 8 goals in 18 months of football, and Ryan Nelsen, the only New Zealander to kick a ball in the Premier League this season and then only in the one appearance he’s been subject to, Harry Redknapp has fully lived up to expectations of being a top quality wheeler-dealer and provider of excitement in the Window, has he not?

No, he hasn’t.

His January activity has seen Spurs sign two players on free transfers with an average age of 33.5-years old: it sounds a bit like the January window you’d expect of a spotty teenager with poor financial control of his Football Manager career. Further mystifying, is the related transfer activity elsewhere at White Hart Lane: in Ryan Nelsen, they’ve signed a defender who is 34 and has only made one appearance this season in a team in the relegation zone. Meanwhile, Vedran Corluka and Sebastien Bassong, also defenders, leave on loan to the Bundesliga and Wolves respectively. Louis Saha is expected to become the cover for the dead on certain departure of Roman Pavlychenko and that could be seen as a justification; however, when Spurs can already boast Emmanuel Adebayor Jermaine Defoe, Cameron Lancaster and have chosen to loan out Harry Kane, it’s hard to find justification for the signing of a striker that spends the majority of the time injured and has only scored one goal this season. As his arrival will undoubtedly stunt Kane’s playing time in the first team, a counterintuitive practice as Kane will need as much of it as he can get as a young blossoming striker, I can only presume Harry’s signed Saha for the ease of spelling: three letters.

Written by Jordan Florit for www.maycauseoffence.com/ For more articles visit my website or my Twitter @JordanFlorit

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Budding Football journalist who blogs at www.maycauseoffence.com/ daily as well as writing here for ThisisFutbol and on www.onehellofabeating.com/ the England fan's page. Outside of writing is more football. I work at Southampton F.C and I manage a men's football team on Saturdays.