Nearly December, isn’t it? It’ll be the Busy Festive Period before you know it. And after that, the January transfer window, traditionally the dampest of all football squibs.
But we’ll not let that stop us getting far too excited far too early and start shouting loudly into the void about which players need to be making moves when 2025 rolls around. We’ve got these 10 just for starters.
Sergio Reguilon (Tottenham)
We’ll be honest here. We thought he’d already left. If indeed we’d thought about him at all. Having spent last season on loan at Manchester United and Brentford and then been essentially invisible this season, surely we can all be forgiven for just assuming he was in Turkey or somewhere on another loan, couldn’t we?
Only once – in the Carabao Cup at Coventry – has Reguilon made it even as far as the bench for a Spurs team that has a calendar as busy as anyone with all those Europa League games you’re expected to plough through these days.
Given how many youngsters are being named on Premier League benches by Ange Postecoglou – 16-year-old Malachi Hardy and 17-year-old Callum Olusesi were among the subs at City on a memorable Saturday evening – the total absence of a 27-year-old Spain international feels particularly pointed.
His contract is up in the summer anyway and we don’t think we’re getting ahead of ourselves in suggesting it’s unlikely he’ll be signing a new one. Might as well get a six-month head-start somewhere else with greater prospects than going to Coventry and sitting on a bench.
Kiernan Dewsbury-Hall (Chelsea)
Chelsea have spent the entire season proving pretty much everyone wrong. They don’t even need Cole Palmer to play well for them to win these days, which is a welcome new bit.
Enzo Maresca has quietly done the near impossible of knitting things together and forming something coherent and functional out of it all. And even Chelsea’s wildly esoteric and eccentric approach to squad-building doesn’t look as mad now as it did a few months ago. The bomb squad has generally been bombed out and everyone left feels pretty significant.
Except Kiernan Dewsbury-Hall. We can all retain a tiny sliver of smugness for being right about what always looked a baffling signing.
He has played 583 minutes of football this season, but do not be deceived by that number. Nearly 400 of those minutes have come in the Europa Conference and while yes, Chelsea do need bodies for those Thursday night formalities we don’t think they need a £40m specialist to negotiate that group stage. A further 147 minutes have come in the Carabao, which is no longer a concern after defeat to Newcastle, leaving just 44 minutes of Premier League action.
He did get on in the 91st minute at Leicester at the weekend, just in time to see his old club score their goal.
He’s not good enough for Chelsea’s midfield and there’s no shame in that. But he’s surely better than Conference League specialist, a niche no player should be occupying at 26 years of age.
Ben Chilwell (Chelsea)
But do you know what’s worse than being a Conference League specialist? Not even being in the Conference League squad.
We generally try not to have two players from the same club in these things, but come on. Chilwell’s season consists of 45 minutes of Carabao at Barrow and that’s it.
He can’t say the manager has been disingenuous, either. Maresca said in August it was “better to leave” and adding “Chilwell is a lovely guy but because of his position he is going to struggle with us” which has always tickled us for being so very close to Gareth Keenan’s assessment of Anton the forklift truck driver.
In September, Maresca doubled down. “The idea for him was to leave.” Sure, Maresca didn’t actually say anything about Chilwell needing great big platform shoes just to reach the pedals because of his little legs, but you knew that’s what he meant.
Manchester United have been linked, which we’re all in favour of. Especially when Chilwell duly joins Mason Mount in Thomas Tuchel’s first England squad a couple of months later.
Casemiro (Manchester United)
It was already a struggle to keep up with the far more ponderous requirements of Erik Ten Hag’s football, but we probably didn’t actually need a demonstration of how much harder the fading Brazilian might find being part of a Rubem Amorim double-pivot. Especially alongside Christian Eriksen. Both have been truly wonderful footballers, but neither is about to do all the running for the other in a midfield that requires high energy and great industry as well as craft and nous.
Casemiro and indeed Eriksen possess the latter qualities in spades, but alas not so much of the former.
Just go and have a nice lucrative rest in Saudi or something, fella. Lord knows he’s earned it. There is nothing for Casemiro to prove to anyone anywhere, and even if there were it surely isn’t going to happen for him in the brave new world Amorim wants to craft at Old Trafford.
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Oleksandr Zinchenko (Arsenal)
He’s had an injury-disrupted season which hasn’t helped, but it really does appear like Arsenal have now outgrown him just as City did before.
There’s no shame in it, and from the outside we’ll perhaps never truly understand how important his mentality and influence on Arsenal’s transformation from also-rans to heavyweight contenders really was. But it’s a waning influence for a player who hasn’t started a Premier League game since the opening day of the season and surely has more to offer somewhere else where the need for his experience is greater in 2025.
At 27 he is surely far too young for a kind of bit-part mentor role. He made 27 Premier League appearances in each of his first two seasons at Arsenal but is going to get nowhere near that this time around having made just a few brief appearances off the bench since that deceptive August start.
Miguel Almiron (Newcastle)
There are a few contenders knocking around at Newcastle, but none more obvious than Almiron who finds himself languishing well behind not just Anthony Gordon but also Jacob Murphy in the St James’ Park pecking order.
That small yet very real period of time where Almiron was genuinely one of the most destructive players in the Premier League feels a long time ago now, with his only Premier League start of the season coming last month in the 2-1 defeat at Chelsea. He hasn’t made it onto the pitch in November.
There was interest in the summer from the usual suspects – Turkey, Saudi, South America and even the US – but Newcastle’s asking price proved a stumbling block. A figure of £15m has been mooted, which does sound like it might be slightly optimistic. Does feel like it would be in everyone’s best interests here if something could be agreed, though.
Marc Guehi (Crystal Palace)
Always two ways of looking at ‘needs a January move’, of course. The first, most obvious one – and the one we always lean most heavily towards – is those players who have fallen out of favour and need to get off their arses and get some minutes under their belts in the second half of the season.
The other way to look at it is to consider a player who is playing lots of football which might not really be doing them much good.
Palace, to their credit, fought hard to keep Guehi out of Newcastle’s clutches in the summer but it’s been a harrowing season at Selhurst Park thus far. They won’t thank us for now trying to sell one of their best players, but should take some comfort in the fact absolutely nobody listens to us for very obvious and correct reasons so it literally doesn’t matter.
Still, though. Guehi had a brilliant summer with England and there is a clear chance right there for him to establish himself as a first-choice starting centre-back under the new manager in 2025. That’s going to be a lot harder to achieve at a club flailing around as Palace currently are. You’d imagine Palace are going to spend January facing a lot of the questions they had to repeatedly answer in the summer, only this time from a far less encouraging position.
Joe Gomez (Liverpool)
The real fun with potential Liverpool departures doesn’t really kick in until next summer of course, although any contract shenanigans involving Trent Alexander-Arnold, Ibrahima Konate and above all Mo Salah retain the worrying potential to destabilise what is a very stable ship at this time.
Still, you wouldn’t expect anyone to be rushing for the January exit given the potential Liverpool’s currently near-flawless season now possesses, but that doesn’t mean there aren’t players who might want to think about it.
Gomez’s only starts this season have come in the Carabao and at 27 with an England place to win back he can’t be withering on the bench like this. Even if only on loan, he surely needs to get out there and play some football.
And he wouldn’t be short of high-level suitors either. Newcastle were keen in the summer and surely would be again, while Aston Villa have also been suggested as a possibility.
John Stones (Manchester City)
Surely everybody wants to get off the sinking Manchester City ship, but Stones has more reason than most.
He’s been England’s best defender for a good while and at 30 should now be at something approaching his peak. But it really doesn’t feel like it at all, does it? He’s just not getting enough game time at City, which means when he does play he looks rusty as hell, which means he doesn’t get enough game time, which means when he does play…
It’s becoming a vicious circle, and one that jeopardises his England place at a time when England could really do with his experience and tournament know-how. Needs to go somewhere where he can actually play on a regular basis to get himself back up to speed; not stay somewhere that when he does finally get to start a game he gets hauled off at half-time because Spurs have just pure taken the piss.
That he is still playing so little football despite Ruben Dias’ injury really is damning.
Emi Buendia (Aston Villa)
He’s played 208 minutes of football for Aston Villa this season, which is already bad enough even before you consider the fact that all but 40 of those minutes have come in the Carabao, a tournament of no further relevance for Villa this season after a pretty drab home defeat to Crystal Palace.
Outside his two starts in that competition, Buendia has become the ultimate brief-cameo-off-the-bench man. He’s actually made seven appearances across the Premier League and Champions League which doesn’t seem bad at all until you remember that we mentioned ’40 minutes’ earlier.
Ten minutes in the Champions League defeat to Club Brugge has been his most substantial contribution in one of the two competitions where Villa’s main focus this season lies. It’s a pretty clear indication that it might be time to start looking elsewhere for more gainful employment.