The deadline day deals that collapsed in the final hours

Deadline day is remembered for what completes. It is usually decided by what does not.

When the English window shut at 23:00 on Tuesday 1 September, at least three deals that had looked live during the afternoon were dead by the evening — and in each case the club left holding nothing has a problem that now cannot be solved until January.

Balogun to Everton

The move for Folarin Balogun stalled and then fell through entirely. Everton begin the season with four points from two matches, having beaten Crystal Palace 2-0 and drawn 1-1 at Bournemouth with a James Tarkowski header in the first minute of stoppage time.

That is a respectable start built on defending rather than scoring, and the numbers say so: three goals in two matches, one of them from a centre-back off a corner. A striker was the obvious requirement. They will go until the winter without one.

Camara to Chelsea

Chelsea had a deal for Lamine Camara in motion and Monaco pulled out of it. That leaves Chelsea having sold Enzo Fernandez to Manchester City for £125m and not replaced him with the player they had identified.

Their season so far argues both ways. They have six points from two, sit fourth on goal difference, and have scored seven — but they beat Brighton 4-3 while having 25.6% of the ball, which is a way of winning football matches that requires everything to go right.

Ndiaye, and the club that got there first

Tottenham wanted Iliman Ndiaye. Manchester City swooped and took him from Everton instead, in a deal reported at up to £65m.

For Spurs the timing is close to the worst it could have been. They are bottom of the Premier League: two matches, no points, no goals scored and five conceded, beaten 3-0 at Brentford and then 0-2 at home by Newcastle.

The shot numbers argue they are creating — seventeen attempts and six on target against Newcastle is not the profile of a side that cannot make chances. What they do not have is anyone converting them, and the one window in which that could have been addressed has now closed.

What the three have in common

There is a thread running through all of them beyond the timing. In each case the club that missed out was not chasing a luxury. Everton have scored three goals in two matches and one of them was a centre-back off a corner in stoppage time. Chelsea had just sold their most expensive midfielder. Tottenham have not scored at all.

Deadline day rewards clubs that identified a target in June and spent August negotiating. It punishes the ones still deciding at four in the afternoon, because by then every price is set by whoever is most desperate, and the selling club knows precisely how many hours are left.

And the club that did get its business done

Manchester City spent £440m across the window and recouped £315m in sales, finishing it by taking Enzo Fernandez from Chelsea for £125m and Iliman Ndiaye from Everton for a fee reported at up to £65m. The second of those is the deal Tottenham believed they were completing.

That is the half of the deadline day story that usually goes untold. Every collapsed transfer has a club on the other side that either changed its mind or took a better offer, and here the better offer came from the side that already sits top of the table.

Why the failures matter more than the signings

A completed transfer buys a club an option. A failed one removes the option and leaves the problem intact for four months, in a period that includes the entire autumn, the Champions League league phase and the Carabao Cup rounds.

Everton need a goalscorer, Chelsea need a midfielder they have just sold, and Tottenham need somebody to finish the chances they are already creating. All three of those sentences were true on Tuesday morning. All three are still true, and none of them can be acted on until 1 January.

The next window opens in the winter. Everything between now and then is played with the squads that exist as of eleven o clock on Tuesday night.

There is one consolation for the clubs that missed out, and it is a real one. Four months is long enough for a player who was not the answer in August to become one by December, and squads that look thin in September routinely look adequate by the time the fixtures pile up and everybody is injured.

It is also long enough for a season to be decided. Tottenham have played two matches and taken nothing from either. If that becomes six or eight, no January signing will fix what the autumn cost, and the conversation stops being about transfers.