What should the top 10 clubs do in this summer’s transfer window?

Remember the January transfer window? Neither do I.

The biggest transfer was 18-year-old Vitor Roque’s €40-million move to Barcelona. He played 300-something minutes and scored two goals — as a center forward. The only other moves involving fees of at least €25 million: full-back Sacha Boey to Bayern Munich and center-back Radu Dragusin to Tottenham. They combined for just over 500 total minutes for their new clubs.

The most impactful move ended up being then-19-year-old Adam Wharton’s €21-million switch from Blackburn Rovers to Crystal Palace. He played at least an hour in every Palace game after he joined the club. They rose up the table, and he made the England squad for the Euros.

In short: things were quiet. Quieter than ever, maybe — certainly quieter than last summer, when 85 different players moved for at least €25 million.

However, the lack of spending in January should mean that the money hoses are about to get cranked up as the temperature rises this summer. The growing impact of the financial controls implemented by various domestic leagues might mean certain clubs can’t spend as much as they normally would, but it also might mean that certain clubs — [takes out binoculars, sets sights on Chelsea’s Stamford Bridge] — have to transfer out players they otherwise wouldn’t want to.

Throw in the Euros and the Copa America — two international tournaments that typically inspire already irrational actors into making even more irrational decisions than usual — and we should see a good deal of player movement this summer. Buckle up for a blockbuster transfer window.

So, with the Premier League transfer window opening on Friday, let’s take a look at the 10 richest clubs in the world, per Deloitte’s latest numbers, and see how their biggest needs stack up against each other. Some of these teams have very specific needs (see: Liverpool, Manchester City and Barcelona) while others have a lot of space to improve (hello, Manchester United), so let’s dig in.

All stats are from domestic play, unless otherwise noted.

10. Manchester City: Rodri backup

Here are two soccer teams:

• Team A: plus-1.17 expected goal differential per 90 minutes
• Team B: plus-0.02 xG differential per 90

Team A is the best team in the Premier League. Team B is Bournemouth. Team A is also Manchester City when Rodri was on the field. Team B is also Manchester City when Rodri was not on the field.

Now, it’s a small sample of matches. Rodri led City in minutes this past season with 2,931, which means just 14% of their season occurred without Rodri on the field. But that’s still more than five full matches’ worth of game time, in which City played at the level of a bottom-half-of-the-table team.

I don’t think that you can find a straight Rodri backup out there unless you want to spend top-of-the-market money. The alternative, then, would be to acquire someone — a right-side winger, perhaps, or maybe an actual overlapping full-back who allows you to play in a different kind of way to the one where Rodri is so essential to everything they do.

Any team in the world would be worse without Rodri, who has a legit case as the best player in the world, but City should still be way better without him than they were last season.

9. Real Madrid: A defender

The clear weak spot in this team is at full-back. Although he scored the game-winner in the Champions League final, Dani Carvajal is 32 and pretty much all of Borussia Dortmund’s big chances in their dominant first half came down Carvajal’s side. On the left, Ferland Mendy will be 30 at the start of next season.

Madrid are aware of this. That’s where all the legit Alphonso Davies rumors are coming from, and it’s why there are lingering-though-not-as-legit rumors about Trent Alexander-Arnold potentially taking up the other full-back slot.

However, Madrid also went through a center-back-injury crisis last season. While it’s unlikely that Éder Militão and David Alaba both tear their ACLs again, the biggest predictor of future injury is past injury. Beyond them, Antonio Rüdiger is 31, and 34-year-old Nacho is a free agent. There’s no one else.

So, rather than pinpointing one position along the backline to upgrade, Madrid seem to have the luxury of upgrading at any position along the backline. Find the proper full-back? Do it. Think the center-back you need could be available? Go for it. Alaba and Militao can both play out wide, and a defense-first full-back might even be preferable, with the arrival of Kylian Mbappé likely to make the team even more vulnerable without the ball.

The defending Champions League winners can do pretty much whatever they want with their defensive personnel and they’ll get better. Must be nice!

8. Arsenal: Someone to create more goals

As we’ve said before, Arsenal were good enough to win the Premier League last season. They had the best non-penalty xG differential in the league, and their point total would’ve been high enough to win the league in plenty of previous seasons. If they perform at the exact level next year — and a couple more bounces go their way — then they will probably win it all.

If there’s one major area for improvement, though, it’s the team’s effectiveness with the ball in open play. Despite that league-leading balance of chance creation and suppression, they only created the sixth-most open-play xG:

Put another way, among players who featured in at least 1,200 minutes last season across the Big Five leagues, Arsenal didn’t have a single one in the top 40 for open-play expected goals plus expected assists per 90 minutes.

They spread the wealth when it came to creating chances — they have five players in the top 100 of the same stat — but that didn’t add up to an open-play attacking team that matched the level of the other best teams in the world.

The clear areas of upgrade would seem to be the third midfielder slot, the one that seemingly was earmarked for Kai Havertz but was instead frequently occupied by Jorginho, or at center forward. With the latter, I wonder what the knock-on effects would be from removing a great defender out of that role; Havertz and Gabriel Jesus are fantastic players without the ball. Perhaps the attack improves but the world’s-best defense declines enough to cancel it out.

With a world-class midfielder, though, it seems like you might be able to get someone who makes the attack even better without sacrificing the defensive solidity that’s propelled Arsenal toward the top of the table.

7. Bayern Munich: A body in the midfield

There are currently two players on Bayern Munich’s roster who you could confidently label as “midfielders.” One is Leon Goretzka, who was fantastic last season but who’s also 29 and is frequently injured. The other is Aleksandar Pavlovic, who is 20 and has just 14 Bundesliga starts.

Of course, there are other players who can contribute to midfield: Joshua Kimmich, who moved to full-back later in the season; Raphaël Guerreiro, who has always felt like a midfielder masquerading as a full-back; Konrad Laimer, who moved from full-back later in the season; and Jamal Musiala, who is either a winger or an attacking midfielder but never anything deeper.

Even granting some of that depth, Kimmich is 29 and also might leave this summer, while Guerreiro and Laimer can’t be relied upon to stay healthy for a full season. The attack was lights-out last season, and while it’s still unclear which of Bayern’s expensive center-backs are actually good, there should be a functional pairing or two somewhere in there. This team needs at least one midfielder, if not more, who they can rely on to A) stay in midfield, and B) get on the field.

6. Liverpool: A third defender

Although much of their late-season struggles came down to a simple inability to put the ball in the goal, Liverpool’s problem across the entirety of last season was not the attack. They took way more shots than anyone in the league, and they created way more xG.

If there’s one big club in the world that’s not going to overreact to a season of wayward finishing, it’s Liverpool. This team only needs an attacker if Mohamed Salah does end up moving to Saudi Arabia, as the rumor mill keeps suggesting.

No, the true weakness of this team was its defense. See, below:

Broadly, the challenge for new head coach Arne Slot and the new front office, which is mostly the same as the old front office, will be to find a way to improve the defense without handicapping the attack. Or even: to improve the defense by a greater degree than said improvements handicap the defense.

Unlike most other top clubs, both of Liverpool’s full-backs still get forward. And unlike most other top clubs, Liverpool played significant portions of the season without a recognized defensive midfielder. Alexis Mac Allister put up impressive tackle+interception numbers, but just staring at those can lead you to believe that João Palhinha is a solution to all of life’s problems. Wataru Endo, too, exceeded pretty much everyone’s expectations with his contributions last season, but he’s 31 years old and he’s my size.

Liverpool essentially attacked with eight players last season: all the attackers, all the midfielders and all the full-backs. Whether it’s a more conservative full-back that lets Trent Alexander-Arnold slide into the midfield, an eventual replacement for Andy Robertson, who does the same on the left side, or an actual physical presence at the base of midfield, Liverpool could use a bit more defensive solidity when they play against the best teams in the world.

5. PSG: A star attacker

Ousmane Dembélé, Bradley Barcola, Gonçalo Ramos, Randal Kolo Muani? All good-to-great players! But none of them are superstars.

Here’s PSG’s top 10 from last season in combined non-penalty goals and expected assists. In other words, this is a list rewarding players for putting the ball into the back of the net and creating quality chances:

In terms of scoring goals and creating chances, Mbappe was more than twice as effective as anyone else on the team. You can’t just replace that internally.

4. Chelsea: A full-back who can stay healthy

For a team that’s signed approximately 400 players over the past two seasons, Chelsea somehow still have plenty of needs.

Thiago Silva, who played 2,500 minutes last season, is gone and as with Bayern Munich, it’s unclear if any of Chelsea’s other expensive defenders are actually good. They signed two new goalkeepers last season, and it’s also unclear if either of them are actually good.

In the midfield, Enzo Fernández and Moisés Caicedo both garnered nine-figure transfer fees but it’s still unclear if they actually work together in the same midfield. And up top, there just hasn’t been a third effective attacker after Nico Jackson and Cole Palmer.

Somehow, though, I think those holes all pale in comparison to what’s happening at full-back. Simply put, there wasn’t a single full-back on this team who started more than 20 games last year. Ben Chilwell has struggled with injuries for the past three seasons at left back, while at right back, Reece James has struggled with injuries for his entire career. Perhaps uncoincidentally, the one season they were both healthy was the one when Chelsea won the Champions League.

At right back, Malo Gusto was impressive replacing James last season — and he only just turned 21 last season. At left back, Marc Cucurella was Marc Cucurella: a player who should probably be playing for a team in the bottom half of the table.

It’s still unclear how much money Chelsea will have to spend and how many players they’ll have to move on in order to have money to spend. Perhaps they can continue to sell their own real estate to themselves, on and on, in a never-ending accounting loop? But if they are limited (and at some point, they have to be… right?) then I think they’re going to have to hope that some of the players they’ve brought in at center-back, up top, in the midfield, and in goal will figure it out.

The obvious solution at left back would be to simply bring back Ian Maatsen after his successful loan spell with Borussia Dortmund, but because of all of the money they’ve spent over the past few years, Chelsea might have to let him go in order to comply with the Premier League’s financial regulations.

3. Barcelona: A defensive midfielder

In the 2022-23 season, Barcelona won the league with the best defense in Europe. In the summer of 2023, Sergio Busquets left Barcelona for Inter Miami. In the summer of 2023, Barcelona didn’t replace Sergio Busquets. And in the 2023-24 season, Barcelona gave up the fifth-most goals — in Spain.

One player never explains anything, but a huge chunk of Barcelona’s defensive decline came from opposition counterattacks. Last season, they were a bottom-five team in terms of xG conceded from counters — a massive drop from the seventh-best mark in the league the season prior. Even at his advanced age, Busquets was a master at reading loose balls to recover possession in the final third. Rather than chasing down fast breaks, he prevented counter attacks from even happening in the first place.

For all their merits, the likes of Frenkie de Jong, Ílkay Gündogan, Pedri and Gavi can’t control games in the way that Busquets did. With all their financial problems, though, Barcelona might be stuck. They can’t afford to not replace Busquets, but they also might not be able to afford anyone who could replace him.

2. Tottenham Hotspur: De-fense, de-fense, de-fense

Here is a plot that charts passes allowed per defensive action (PPDA) with non-penalty expected goals conceded. In other words, it’s how aggressive you press on one axis, and how well you defend on the other:

Normally, I think most pressing teams get a bad rap. The aggressive approach almost guarantees that they will give up a number of huge, terrible-looking chances each season. People remember those moments but forget all of the times that those moments didn’t happen. And so, these teams get labeled as “naive” or whatever, but on the whole, they actually concede fewer chances across the entire season than more conservative defensive teams do.

This wasn’t the case with Tottenham, though. They pressed as aggressively as Liverpool, who pressed more aggressively than in any other season under Jurgen Klopp, but they were also a below-average defensive team. Tottenham’s 59 non-penalty xG allowed was just the 13th-best mark in the league.

This paid off on the attacking end, as they created 67.4 xG — an increase of 14 despite losing arguably the best center forward in the world, Harry Kane, last summer. Their xG difference was also slightly better — plus-0.22, up from 0.13 last season — so despite the late-season slump, it’s hard to argue that manager Ange Postecoglu employed the wrong approach in his first season with the club. The point bears repeating: They improved without Harry Kane.

But if this is the approach, then the way to get better defensively — and I know this is going to sound wild, but please just hear me out — is to sign better defensive players. Can they upgrade on the midfield duo of Yves Bissouma and Pape Matar Sarr? Is there a more defensive option who can take over for one of the full-backs Pedro Porro or Destiny Udogie, who both were impressive on the ball last year? Can they find more center-back depth for when Cristian Romero inevitably gets suspended again next season?

At the very least, Spurs should be able to find players who can take over for the nearly 3,000 combined minutes that Emerson Royal, Ben Davies and Oliver Skipp played last season.

1. Manchester United: Anyone who will be good enough to challenge for a title in four years

On the one hand, Manchester United allowed more shots per game than all but one of the 95 other teams across Europe’s “Big Five” top leagues. On the other, they created the 12th most non-penalty xG … in the Premier League.

They were a terrible defensive team and an average-at-best attacking team. The obvious area to upgrade is center-back. The only two players currently under contract at the position are Lisandro Martínez, who is 26 but frequently injured, and Harry Maguire, who is 31 and currently injured.

But I don’t think United even need to be that specific. I mean, yes, they should employ more than two center-backs so they can form an actual team next season. But this club is so far away from genuinely competing for the kinds of things a team with United’s revenues should be competing for. They had a negative goal differential last season; by xG differential, they were the 15th-best team in the league.