The January sales: club-by-club guide

As Christmas messages go, it hardly added to the seasonal cheer. Cards sent out by John Madejski, the multimillionaire Reading chairman, to club staff smacked more of a gloomy Mystic Meg than Santa. They simply depicted a Christmas tree, stripped of any vestige of twinkling lights and with not a parcel in sight under its bare, brown branches.

The warning was clear: if you think Christmas is bad, just wait until the new year dawns. As shops up and down Britain’s high streets put down their shutters for the last time, football is starting to wonder out loud whether the January sales will be as much of a damp spending squib as those in the stores.

The January transfer window is traditionally the time to panic-buy. For teams at the top of the Barclays Premier League it is the time to strengthen squads buckling under the weight of European fixtures crammed on top of cup-ties and demanding league games; for teams at the bottom it is the chance to spend quickly and hope that new players can save them from relegation and the catastrophic loss of income that goes with it.

January transfer spending in the Premier League and Football League has soared in recent years, from £33 million in 2003 to £175 million last January. But that was when the good times rolled, when credit was easy and players’ agents could name their price.

Now the only word associated with credit is crunch and even football’s sugar daddies are squealing that enough is enough. If moneybags Chelsea, with Roman Abramovich, their Russian billionaire benefactor, have called a temporary halt to signings while they cut staff and shave spending, what chance have the rest?

Manchester United look as though they will limit themselves to investing £15 million in their future by taking on two Serbs, Zoran Tosic, aged 21, and Adem Ljajic, 17, but it is not clear whether these deals will go through next month. Rumours swirl that Arsenal will bid a club-record fee to woo Carlos Tévez from United, while Liverpool have been associated with many big-name players.

Arsenal, at least, have money in the bank, but what happens when Rafael Benítez goes to George Gillett Jr and Tom Hicks, the Liverpool owners, with his price list? The Liverpool manager is likely to leave the room with his ears ringing from a lecture about economics, which may include how the pair plan to refinance the £350 million loan they used to buy the club, which is due for renegotiation while the transfer window is open wide.

That leaves Tottenham Hotspur, one of the few profitable clubs in football, who have spied the promised land of the “Big Four” under Harry Redknapp, their new manager, and could release funds for two or three significant signings. The only big spending will come from the coffers of Manchester City’s Arab owners, whose pile of petro-dollars remains untouched by the financial meltdown.

If Mark Hughes, the City manager, spends all of his budget, it is unlikely to come anywhere near to sending January’s total near to last year’s record mark. Premier League clubs such as Middlesbrough have battened down the financial hatches to the extent that they cannot buy unless they sell. And a club such as Middlesbrough do not want to sell an asset as valuable as Stewart Downing, their England winger who has been targeted by Tottenham, even if Redknapp comes calling with an offer of £15 million.

Shopping for bargains from abroad is also out in the new austerity era. Sterling’s fall means that players from the Continent are 20 per cent more expensive this January than they were last, according to the foreign exchange trading company Currencies Direct.

That will not stop Manchester City’s owners in Abu Dhabi opening their gilded chequebook. But City, and a lucky (or desperate) few aside, football’s coffers are looking increasingly bare. For some of the 72 Football League clubs and the dozens of teams in the Blue Square Premier and lower leagues, Santa brought little but big bills and final demands this Christmas.