Football Transfer Market Dynamics and Long-Term Planning

In February, about 100 club officials, scouts and agents gathered at Villa Park for a networking event.

Over coffee and pastries, in William McGregor's in the Trinity Road Stand, representatives from clubs including Liverpool, West Ham, Birmingham, Preston, Derby, Aston Villa and Manchester City chatted, along with agents, to prepare for the summer and debrief the winter.

In the afternoon, Villa's head of emerging talent and loans Adam Henshall gave a presentation on how the club oversees its loaning out of players - outlining the data, the risk and reward elements they take into consideration before sending their young talent out.

Henshall had been asked to provide insight into Villa's workings by TransferRoom, which uses its online platform to connect clubs and agents, potentially initiating or accelerating moves.

About 800 clubs have signed up and, this week, Villa, Chelsea, Crystal Palace, Manchester City and United, Roma and Borussia Dortmund will be among more than 200 who will meet with 55 agencies in Madrid for a 'deal day' where moves can be finalised. Online events are held too.

The aim is to aid clubs in a window which is expected to erupt in the second half of August, clubs having been unable to get the majority of deals done early because of the World Cup.

Meanwhile, clubs in the English Football League are finding they have to wait for those at the top to make their decisions to kick-start the market, even if plans are well in place.

Ideally, clubs aim to work at least one window ahead, with one senior Premier League recruitment executive insisting anything else is "reactionary".

In the top flight, clubs will know who is most likely to move and can plan in advance.

It is vastly different lower down where there is the acceptance that, if a player is performing well, they could be likely to move on.

Essentially, any player is tradeable, leaving sporting directors and managers to firefight.

Many lower EFL clubs also look to time moves to save on wages, signing someone later in the window meaning they might save weeks' worth of salary payments.

The amount of data used in recruitment also varies greatly throughout the leagues - platforms analysing players are available, but the cost of accessing means that some clubs in the lower leagues will not be able to justify the expense.

But for all, planning starts early with work on the summer window typically starting almost immediately after the winter window.

"It'll be a couple of weeks after the January window shuts," says former Portsmouth, Blackpool, Oxford and Shrewsbury boss Michael Appleton.

"The closer you get to the window opening, your meetings become a lot more regular.

"At the start of March, I'm sitting down with the recruitment team once a week but once you get closer to the window that becomes every few days and then leading into the window, possibly every day."

Much, though, will depend on the club's network. In some instances, they might contact an agency 12 months before a move, discussing the contract or estimated fee, but other moves will be just days from initial contact to completion. One lower league club has previously searched for targets' agents on Instagram.

All, though, will try to gather as much information as possible on their target list - even if they know they will not land them all.

One of the biggest moves this summer, despite being a free transfer, saw Poland captain Robert Lewandowski join MLS side Chicago Fire after his Barcelona contract expired.

Fire had been eyeing Lewandowski for a decade, believing they could convince him to come to America, especially with the large Polish community in Chicago.

"That sounds ridiculous because at that stage he was in the prime of his career and scoring goals for Bayern and then Barcelona, but it shows the long-term planning," Fire sporting director Gregg Broughton tells BBC Sport.

It became a reality in January 2025 when Fire were in negotiations for Neymar, who shares the same agent - Pini Zahavi - as Lewandowski.

While Neymar opted to return to Brazil with Santos, it was made clear then there was a possibility to sign Poland's record scorer.

Being on Fire's 'discovery list' meant no other MLS club could sign the forward - but they still had to bide their time, waiting for Barcelona to make their decision on the 37-year-old's future and being unable to speak directly to Lewandowski until 1 January.

That call was made quickly afterwards and boss Gregg Berhalter flew to Spain to meet him.

"The rest of the club is building the structure around it with his representatives because when you've got a player of Robert's stature, it's not just a straightforward contract," says Broughton.

"There are commercial negotiations to be had. What did that look like in terms of his own future career beyond football? What did it mean for his wife?

"His wife has her own very successful fitness business. What did that look like opening up to an American market? Where are his children going to go to school? What kind of school do they go to in Barcelona?"

Lewandowski made his first trip to the city in June and was met with a fanfare of 'welcome to Chicago' billboard messages from the drive from the airport.

"I'm not sure you'd do that between Heathrow and Chelsea," joked Broughton.

"My concern as the sporting director was: 'how are we going to keep this under wraps?' I was looking purely through a European lens and the Americans are: 'we're not going to, because that's not how we treat free agents in American sport. We're going to go big on it.'

It worked and Lewandowski signed a two-year deal, as Fire held off European and Saudi interest.

"The signing is evidence the plan is working," added Broughton.

Some feel the growing influence of agents has made the window more complicated because they want more control in club-to-club agreements. The amount of paperwork can also be increased adding to frustrations, even if there is a general acceptance that agents are a vital part of the system.

Agents will, understandably, want to see the paperwork and go through the AF1 document - the agency agreement which details the deal, which agents worked on it, how much they will be paid and how. Clubs can view it as another layer to a deal and a further complication.

Yet with deadline day just a month away, agents are only going to get busier - though there is a sentiment from some at the top of the Premier League that if sides are pulling together deals on deadline day they are likely to be a mistake.

Those in recruitment in the top flight feel that, ideally, clubs should have been in a position at least 72 hours before the deadline to make a move.

The majority of big deals are done weeks in advance and, if they go through in the final hours, it is usually just because numbers still had to be finalised.

"I like to get my work done before then, so you're not panicking and rushing about," adds Appleton. "But a lot of stuff on deadline day is more about preparing for players that you're going to lose or might lose and reacting quickly."

But in terms of what can happen between now and 1 September?

"When you are in the job nothing is strange," quips one top-flight recruitment chief.