Who won the WSL transfer deadline day? A better question: Does it matter?

Congratulations, Manchester City. You just defeated Chelsea 5-1. Your team looks sublime, indomitable even, a touch of the divine. You might win the league. Thirteen wins on the trot, and chasing the Women’s Super League record of 19 victories in one season, looking all the more invincible with Kerolin’s return, Andree Jeglertz’s calm approach and Bunny Shaw’s form. Still, the questions came Tuesday morning, noon and night, as they do every transfer window:

“Any more news on signings?”

“Signings?”

“What about signings?”

If the January transfer window were moved to February, after most of the general public forswore their earlier forswearing of alcohol and other bad habits, like carbs and taking the elevator, would they be so desperate for this stuff?

Or would we spend less time attempting to stuff those self-imposed holes in our lives with weeks-long social media productions of Arsenal’s Stan(way)-Off, Guess Chelsea’s Next American, or the comedic franchise that is Will Everton Sign A Striker Before Brian Sorensen Is sacked? (The answer to that last one? No)

Hold that thought. Word just in that Chelsea are signing a midfielder. Nigeria international Jennifer Echegini. Chelsea are back. Take that Arse – Wait. It’s off. Paris Saint-Germain have said “not for sale”. But don’t leave this page. Everton are still to announce midfielder Zara Kramzar on loan from Roma. We promise.

Around this time, The Athletic’s phone seizures next to a forlorn half-eaten slice of morning toast. Not with breaking transfer news but with an umpteenth text asking what was up and, with more melancholy, why more wasn’t up and why everyone was being so frugal. Because this is all rather boring, isn’t it? Didn’t anyone win the 2026 Winter transfer window that came to a close last night?

Manchester United, Manchester City, Tottenham Hotspur, West Ham United, Leicester City and Liverpool entered the final day of the window with their business wrapped up. Arsenal eventually signed goalkeeper Barbora Votikova on loan from Slavia Prague. Everton, finally, signed Kramzar. Chelsea left it late again, but unlike the past two deadline days (Keira Walsh from Barcelona for £400,000/$550,000; Alyssa Thompson from Angel City for £1million and some), Chelsea didn’t have a pizza party because PSG, one can only assume, prefer tarte flambee.

None of which should be constituted as a failure.

Most teams entered December prepared. Most teams exited January with relatively fulfilled grocery lists, with further business to be done in the summer when key contacts come to an end. There is no summer tournament. A significant number of players are out of contract in June. In total, 80 deals (incomings and outgoings, including loans) took place between January 2 and February 3 across the English top-flight, roughly 2.5 deals per day, which is roughly the number completed on deadline day.

And yet the baying online would suggest this is more than regret, that we have all been denied some marvellous experience and the final hours of the transfer window failed to deliver on its apparent promise of unfettered theatre and fun.

At this point, it’d be prudent to recall Spurs shattered their transfer record for a second time this season to bring 20-year-old Norway midfielder Signe Gaupset to the WSL — more than a month before the window actually commenced. Signed from Brann, Gaupset was the first of five players Martin Ho brought in, almost as many as Liverpool (six), who also broke their club transfer record to sign Denise O’Sullivan from NC Courage as part of a winter bill that totalled £1.3million, assumably the price required to not finish bottom of the WSL.

Elsewhere, Smilla Holmberg joined Arsenal. Strikers Lea Schuller and Ellen Wangerheim both now live on the red side of Manchester. The WSL is on course to complete its sticker page of the entire Sweden national team by 2027.

Sam Coffey became the latest U.S. women’s national team player to discover the surprising and sometimes disappointing enigma that is a Tesco club card, joining City for £650,000 plus add-ons from the Portland Thorns. Speaking of enigmas, Katie Zelem plays for West Ham now on loan after less than five months with London City. Alisha Lehmann ditched Lake Como for the King Power Stadium and Leicester City, which has long been considered the Lake Como of England. Jenna Nighswonger does, in fact, still live in the country and is now playing football in Birmingham, on loan with Aston Villa from Arsenal. Oriane Jean-Francois is also there, for a fee of £450,000 to Chelsea.

Speaking of that part of England, Birmingham City spent roughly £300,000 on Swedish midfielder Wilma Leidhammar. The fee is almost as much as top-flight side Everton, who sit four points clear of the WSL’s bottom, have spent in total since the end of the 2024-25 season.

At which point, we should probably check in on Chelsea head coach Sonia Bompastor, who is busy lamenting not having enough depth and the lack of spending in the summer and winter windows.

Maybe Bompastor has a point: Chelsea only signed Thompson, Mara Alber, Livia Peng and Ellie Carpenter in the summer for a combined total of close to £2million. But they’ve spent nothing since, despite significant injuries (and Maika Hamano leaving for Spurs on loan and Oriane Jean-Francois joining Aston Villa for £450,000) limiting their usual tranche of squad depth. Chelsea have been without an in-form centre-forward all season. They probably should have brought in a deputy for Lauren James or thought about nurturing one at some point. Which could all officially doom their season, with their Champions League title hopes in the dumpster and top-three hopes on fire — and not in the good way.

Bompastor’s sentiments, in one sense, should not be totally dismissed. There is a growing agreement among decision-makers in the WSL that success — or at least adequate survival in the top flight — is proportional to money spent. To sit still is to stagnate, which is to be unseated.

Which is all very important, sure, but who won the winter transfer window? And who is coming in the summer? Where is Katie McCabe going? Are we all OK? Do we hear ourselves? Is this what we want?

The transfer window’s evolution into its own industrial content complex has been long and tedious, a collective frothing at the mouth curated by media, clubs, fans, agents and aggregator accounts. Signings are now their own form of currency, a sign not only of a journalist’s prestige but the authority granted to supporters that they are that window’s winner of the “My Club Is Richer And Thus Better Than Yours” trophy, which just edges the League Cup for repute.

WSL Football now has a dedicated page to keep up to date with all the transfers, to ensure we’re never too far from our saline drip.

But there are bigger, more fraught lines to draw here: the content-ification of sport; the hyper-consumerism driving it forward; the disproportionate financial heft of the WSL in an already small market; the effect on homegrown talent; the reduction of players to commodities to be bartered and sold, their value, or lack of, thrashed out on social media as a form of fanbase warfare.

At which point you, fan of (not Chelsea or Everton), drop to your knees. You offer your gratitude to the Gods Sporting Directors above for all the blessings bestowed upon you this January. Or maybe you spew curses instead, lamenting their lack of benevolence, their failure to convince Klara Buhl or Tessa Wullaert or anyone from the USWNT to join you this winter.

But don’t fret. We’ll do it all again in the summer.

This article originally appeared in The Athletic.

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