Clubs do not wait for the market to arrive. Premier League sides have already spent more than £1bn in this window, but the more interesting detail is how much work happens before the headlines. In February, about 100 club officials, scouts and agents gathered at Aston Villa's Villa Park for a networking event, while more than 200 clubs are due to meet 55 agencies in Madrid for a deal day.

Recruitment meetings start early

Michael Appleton, the former Portsmouth, Blackpool, Oxford and Shrewsbury boss, said recruitment work begins quickly after January closes. In his words, "It'll be a couple of weeks after the January window shuts." He added that meetings can be weekly in March, then every few days, then possibly every day before the window opens.

That rhythm fits the scale of the market now. About 800 clubs have signed up to TransferRoom, which gives recruitment departments a structured way to keep contacts warm, compare options and line up talks before they need to move.

Big deals are planned in advance

The long lead time is even clearer in the biggest moves. Gregg Broughton, the Chelsea sporting director, said [Chicago Fire] had been eyeing Robert Lewandowski for a decade before his free transfer after his Barcelona contract expired. He said the club only got direct contact from 1 January, when Lewandowski became available to discuss his future.

Broughton also said elite deals are rarely just about the contract. "There are commercial negotiations to be had," he said, along with questions about a player's future beyond football and family considerations. That is the part supporters do not see when a deal finally lands, but it is clearly where a lot of the work sits.

The market still has the late-summer rush to come, and the spending power of Manchester City, Chelsea and other Premier League clubs will keep pushing it forward. The groundwork, though, was laid weeks and months earlier, in meeting rooms, at networking events and through the kind of contacts that make a deal possible when the window finally opens.

Written by Jack Mercer with AI-assisted research, cross-checked against 1 outlet. How we work →