When Premier League clubs do their business in the transfer window

Follow our live coverage of the latest transfer news on deadline day 2022.

When a new player joins a Premier League side later on in the transfer window, questions are often asked about how quickly that player will settle in. But does the timing of a player’s arrival at a club actually impact a team’s success?

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We analysed data from the last five seasons, dating back to 2018-19 through to this season, involving every transfer and loan made by every Premier League team to find out which teams strike early, who waits until later on in the window and which teams are most active on deadline day.

We’ve only included players who have at least one first-team appearance in these statistics, while players signed this summer are also included, even if they haven’t yet made a first-team appearance.

We made a note of when every signing was made across both transfer windows in the past five seasons and then calculated how many days there were on average between a player signing and the transfer window closing.

Liverpool are the earliest movers in the transfer window, often finalising deals many weeks before it opens. Fabio Carvalho, Ibrahima Konate, Darwin Nunez and Fabinho were all signed at least six weeks before the window.

A new player joins Liverpool 41 days on average before the window closes, giving Jurgen Klopp nearly six weeks to help each player get acclimatised to their new surroundings. Aside from Adrian, Luis Diaz and Ozan Kabak, every player Liverpool have signed over the past five years has joined at least 11 days before deadline day.

Chelsea also like to get business done early, with their average signing being made 38 days before the window closes — although that result is skewed heavily by their