Transfers few and far between among the Premier League title chasers as January window thins the market

Manchester City need a centre-back and at least one more full-back. Manchester United need a centre-back. Chelsea need a better back-up centre forward and so do Tottenham Hotspur. Liverpool look one body short, if not two, and are vulnerable to injuries.

And yet for the Premier League’s big six sides it has been a strikingly low-key January so far. They have made no progress on addressing the obvious flaws in their squads. While teams from the ‘bottom 14’ of the league start to throw money at problems, and the Championship sides continue to punt on promotion, the big boys have kept their powder dry.

But why? They obviously have the money. City and United both spent hundreds of millions of pounds last summer and will do so again this year. Arsenal are not afraid to swing the bat anymore and even Liverpool and Spurs signed £30m players in the summer.

The problem is that money alone is not enough. The big teams also need to find players who are good enough to join them playing for clubs willing to sell. And the reality of football is that no-one wants to give up their best players in January.

Pep Guardiola was very open on Friday night about how he needed another centre-back. With Vincent Kompany always injured, Nicolas Otamendi and John Stones are his only two fit specialists there, with Aleksandar Kolarov able to fill in. City tried to sign Aymeric Laporte from Athletic Bilbao last summer and would dearly love Virgil van Dijk from Southampton. But why would a serious side part with their defensive lynchpin with the most important half of the season left to play?

This is why City are scrambling around for a short-term fix, someone who can play a few games before the end of the season. There is an interest in Holger Badstuber from Bayern Munich, a good player whose last few years have been lost to injury. Whether or not City complete the move, he is the type of player that big clubs can get at this time, though the fame of the big Premier League sides perhaps counts against them. Their strengths and weaknesses are so globally known that their bargaining position is fatally undermined.

In the Championship none of these problems exist. Rather than focusing on the small pool of players good enough to play for a Champions League-chasing side they can take their pick from a far broader range. Their problems are less known and have not been flagged up to the world. And the incentives to earn promotion to the Premier League outweigh the limited costs at that end of the market.

That explains why Brentford, Leeds United, Newcastle United, Aston Villa and almost any club with a chance of promotion is willing to push the boat out this month. They can still sign players who can improve them without fear of being taken for a ride. The big boys will be back in the summer, but this is the smaller teams’ time to shine.