Top 5 influential January Deadline Day signings in Premier League history
Deadline day and desperation are two easily relatable things. Deadline day is the bringer of insanity as managers often go crazy on the last day of a transfer window in their quest to sign players to fill up and get quality in their respective squads.
Getting quality for a fair price in the January window is an extremely difficult task as clubs don't want to sell their prized assets during an ongoing season.
While getting value for money is tough, many teams have done some shrewd piece of businesses and have acquired world-class players in the January transfer window but there's no denying that it becomes even more sweeter if the deal just goes through into the dying stages of a transfer window.
Most clubs believe that deadline day business is risky. Yet, there have been some successful mid-season deadline day deals, since the January window's inception in 2003.
With that in mind, here we take a look at 5 of the Premier League's best ever mid-season deadline day signings.
#5 Jermain Defoe - West Ham to Tottenham
Defoe joined The Lilywhites on the deadline day of the mid-season transfer window in 2004 for Bobby Zamora plus a £7 million fee, the striker went on to score 43 league goals in 139 appearances for Spurs, a then mid-table club.
He scored a trademark debut strike in a 4-3 win over Portsmouth and soon became an England regular. In his first season at the London-based club, Defoe went on to win the club's Player of the Year award.
He left Spurs for Portsmouth in January 2008, only to come back a year later for a sum of £15.75 million and added 79 more goals to his club tally over the course of the next 5 seasons.