A Stuck Man? A stuck man. The transfer window is closed and that always, always, always catches certain clubs and players by surprise. Twice a year you’re always left with some unfortunate players in seatless limbo when the music stops.
This year, thanks in large part to Emi Martinez’s heroic tragicomic antics they exist in sufficient numbers and of the requisite types to fashion an entire semi-coherent team of players waking up this morning thinking ‘now what?’ and hoping beyond hope that – like a balding Essex man in his mid-30s – Turkey might provide some hope.
Yes, the good old late-closing Turkish transfer window – and that in Saudi Arabia – means escape routes might yet materialise for some, but for now here’s the current Premier League Stuck Man XI.
GK: Emi Martinez (stuck at Aston Villa)
Thought he’d wangled himself a move to the Manchester United circus, but instead is left inside the tent p*ssing here, there and everywhere at Villa, where his final meaningful on-field act still really might be the red card at Old Trafford on the final day of last season that played such a key role in Aston Villa missing out on Champions League qualification.
It already looks like a massive sliding-doors moment for both player and club. In a bad way. We’d imagine Villa will still want him gone if there’s any way of doing so, meaning Turkish and Saudi clubs might be sniffing a bargain.
RB: Andres Garcia (stuck at Aston Villa)
The right-back’s January arrival was somewhat overshadowed by Villa’s flashier winter loan moves, but with his path to the first team blocked by Matty Cash there was plenty of talk in the summer about some pretty eye-catching teams across the continent weighing up moves that never materialised for a man whose main chances of Villa action will likely be restricted to Europa League and domestic cup competitions.
We don’t imagine he’s heartbroken to still be at Villa, but with Sevilla, Real Betis and top-flight clubs in both Germany and Italy interested it would be surprising if his head hadn’t been at least slightly turned by the prospect of more regular football in some of those places.
LB: Tyrell Malacia (stuck at Manchester United)
Look, we’re not going to just try and make all of these ‘maybe a Turkish club saves the day’ but this is another one that really does look like it might need a Turkish club to save the day after a proposed loan move to Elche collapsed as the clock ticked down.
Some unwanted Stuck Men scream Turkish big three. Malacia, we would suggest, screams ‘whichever club is currently trying to muscle in and disrupt that big three’. Trabzonspor or some such. We don’t know, we’ve not looked into it. But Tyrell probably should.
CB: Axel Disasi (stuck at Chelsea)
Spent the second half of last season on loan at Aston Villa but now returns to his previous status as a fully paid-up member of the Chelsea Bomb Squad.
Plenty of reports suggest Disasi had Premier League options late in the window, but they were more of the Bournemouth and Wolves and West Ham variety. Personally, we’d have been pretty keen to explore that Bournemouth option but we can see why the other two carried less appeal than sitting around collecting pay-cheques at Cobham with Raheem Sterling.
Saudi Pro League side Neom have been linked because obviously.
CB: Marc Guehi (stuck at Crystal Palace)
We do feel sorry for him, but not that sorry. It must be desperately hard to think that big dream move to the Premier League champions and current favourites is happening only for the rug to be pulled at the last minute, but the idea that Palace did anything unreasonable here is a daftness.
Liverpool started the summer complaining about Trent Alexander-Arnold and ended it complaining that Palace didn’t simply let them have their captain without a suitable replacement being sourced first, and spent their time in between those two events bullying all manner of smaller clubs into all manner of stunning transfer successes for the Reds.
They – and Guehi – will simply have to accept this rare defeat. And on Guehi’s part, the disappointment should be tempered by knowing he’s been a model pro who gave his all for Palace until the very end – something, ultimately, not even Eberechi Eze was prepared to do – and there will be no humiliating and difficult reintegration process to be completed here.
And in January and especially next summer, Guehi will have full control of his future while also almost certainly being England’s first-choice World Cup centre-back.
There are people in this team in a far worse pickle, is what we’re saying here.
CM: Yves Bissouma (stuck at Tottenham)
P*ssed off Thomas Frank from the very start with his shoddy timekeeping leading to an internal ban from the Super Cup against PSG, and despite now being available he appears to have dropped firmly to the very bottom of a midfield pecking order that also features Joao Palhinha, Rodrigo Bentancur, Pape Sarr, Archie Gray and Lucas Bergvall.
If we were to make a prediction for what the next week or so holds for him, it would involve whichever members of the Turkish big three have a manager in place to make the decision to sign him.
CM: Kalvin Phillips (stuck at Man City)
A slower than anticipated recovery from Achilles surgery left Phillips with no real plausible route out of City during a summer window that everyone assumed would mark the end of his unhappy time in Manchester (and London, and Ipswich).
Former club Leeds were inevitably credited with early-summer interest, but any they did have was understandably caveated by those injury doubts, which simply didn’t clear in time for anything to go beyond the hypothetical anyway.
Phillips, who at 29 still has a faintly absurd three years left on his City contract, now faces four months at least in the wilderness and suffering the indignity of being stripped of his shirt number entirely and not being registered in either City’s Premier League or Champions League squads despite them having the space to do so.
AM: Harry Wilson (stuck at Fulham)
Has been at Fulham for four years now which seems a long old time, and was apparently all set for a deadline-day move to Leeds.
Alas, the Cottagers – as is their wont – had yet again treated the transfer window like year eights treat summer holiday homework and left absolutely everything to the very last minute, meaning they were so focused on desperate last-minute incomings they clean forgot about sorting the outgoings.
The result, a player so unwanted Fulham couldn’t even be bothered to find time to arrange his departure, and a very angry Daniel Farke.
LW: Jota Silva (just stuck)
The unluckiest bastard of the lot is perhaps Jota Silva, who finds himself in a state of limbo and no absolute clarity at this time about which club if any he actually plays for.
A late deal to take him from Nottingham Forest to Sporting was successfully submitted to FIFA’s Transfer Matching System, but not apparently completed in time with the Portuguese league.
This creates a scenario whereby Sporting may be left with a player they can only use in Champions League fixtures until January. And that is if he has indeed joined Sporting at all, which farcically doesn’t appear at all clear at this time with no official announcement from either club.
So he’s either stuck at Forest, where he’ll hardly play. Or stuck at Sporting, where he’ll hardly play. Or both. Or neither. He is Schrodinger’s winger, playing for both Forest and Sporting yet also neither.
RW: Raheem Sterling (stuck at Chelsea)
Spurs belatedly managing to pull their finger out and bring in Xavi Simons and Randal Kolo Muani before the deadline denied us one of the funniest of all possible moves.
We’d foolishly daydreamed our way into fully convincing ourselves after the Eze Fiasco of a deadline-day panic move for Sterling that would allowed him to tick off a fifth member of the Big Six before finishing the set with a successful stint in the Championship with Manchester United in 2026/27.
Alas, Spurs have cruelly denied us this dream scenario with a rare and unhelpful display of transfer competence. But it does seem awful careless of Chelsea not to have found someone to take Sterling off their hands for a bit. There were enough desperate Premier League clubs still stumbling blindly around on deadline day waving their chequebooks at anything that moved for something to have happened, surely.
CF: Jorgan Strand Larsen (stuck at Wolves)
Can you be stuck at a team you only joined on a permanent deal two months earlier? Yes. Yes you can. Larsen proved himself a solidly reliable Premier League striker last season with 14 goals on loan from Celta Vigo last season more than enough for Wolves to trigger the buy option in that deal.
But proving yourself a solidly reliable Premier League striker with 14 goals made Larsen an enormously valuable commodity in this economy, one where Newcastle were absolutely desperate to pre-spend the massive Alexander Isak windfall we all – with one definitely not rattled exception – strongly suspected was coming their way.
Larsen was keen on the move but still scored two goals in a very funny Carabao win over West Ham, but then sat out the Premier League defeat to Everton as Wolves held firm and Newcastle instead spent all their pocket money on Nick Woltemade and Yoane Wissa instead.