Many people in football have said that you can’t buy quality players in January, but Premier League trio Newcastle United, Everton and Swansea City have all proved this season that that’s just not true.
Senegal striker Papiss Cisse has been a revelation in English football. Newcastle’s number nine has hit ten goals in nine Premier League matches and been one of the driving forces in the Magpies’ push for Champions League qualification.
Cisse looks like a top, top goal scorer, having carried his form from the Bundesliga with Freiburg to Tyneside. He scores tap ins, headers and the spectacular, with his strikes against Aston Villa and Swansea evidence of the latter.
Another striker who has hit the ground running in the Premier League is Everton’s Nikica Jelavic. The Croatian international may have been on the losing side in the FA Cup semi-final against Liverpool at Wembley today, but he netted once again.
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Jelavic has a strike rate of one in two in the Premier League, with four goals in eight matches, as well as netting two in the FA Cup. The 26-year-old has shown that maybe there isn’t such a big gap between the SPL and English football, with his move from Rangers to Everton going well so far.
Then there’s Swansea midfielder Gylfi Sigurdsson. On loan from Bundesliga club Hoffenheim, the Icelandic international has also showed his goal scoring prowess, netting seven times in 14 Premier League matches.
The 22-year-old’s form led to him becoming the Premier League Player of the Month for March and has also helped to secure top flight football for the Swans next season. Now Swansea will have to dig deep into their pocket in the summer to ensure that Sigurdsson is still there next season.
Maybe the examples of Papiss Cisse, Nikica Jelavic and Gylfi Sigurdsson will persuade more Premier League managers to part with their cash next January, as all three have given their respective teams a huge boost for the second half of the season.
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206 great goals…
