So the dust is settling and the ink drying on another closed transfer window, and it's time for football fans to keep their fingers crossed that players - especially those who are previously untested in the Premier League - live up to their billing and, more importantly, their price tag.

While one may laud the move of Birmingham to bring in Alexander Hleb on loan - there will undoubtedly be a significant number of expensive mistakes. Paul Hayward at the Guardian looks at Manchester City's selling and spending, starting with Brazilian flop Robinho.

"More compelling than Manchester City's lavish buys were the crashingly expensive errors they tried to correct in this transfer window: chiefly, that deadline-day thespian, Robinho, who has bounced between Real Madrid, City and now Milan inside two years, and left no pool of perspiration at Eastlands when he moved to Italy.

While the gaze was locked on David Silva, Jérôme Boateng, Yaya Touré, James Milner, Mario Balotelli and Aleksandar Kolarov as they pushed City's new wage commitments to £488m, the purge of other recent acquisitions pointed to a problem only the sky blue half of Manchester could afford to solve without recourse to Valium. In the downturn other Premier League high-spenders focused their energies on shedding players whose inflated transfer fees felt onerous and whose high wages have rendered them hard to move on.

Liverpool's Alberto Aquilani, bought for £20m to replace the superior Xabi Alonso, was dispatched on loan to Juventus to conceal the reality that he was the worst piece of business in the Rafa Benítez years. So frantic were Liverpool to correct that booboo that they rushed Aquilani off the wage bill for a year and will not know whether the £20m transfer fee is recoverable until the Old Lady of Turin has seen him play.

Across the league there is a platinum club of names who were big enough for long enough for agents to secure mega-deals that their clubs are still manacled to. Among those who might have been on the move at 6pm had their employers been able to persuade their rivals to assume the high salary costs were Newcastle's Xisco (a dud, reportedly on £55,000 a week), Nigel Reo-Coker (Aston Villa) and David Bentley, Robbie Keane and Roman Pavlyuchenko of Spurs. Bentley was wanted by Fulham, but only as a loanee."

Surprisingly, the closing of the transfer window appears to have been quickly forgotten by much of the English press, with focus already turning to the start of the Euro 2012 qualifying campaign. I must of course note that the qualifiers have already begun - apologies to Estonia and Faroe Islands - but this is where the big boys get under way.

That "big boy" tag is still applied to England, despite their poor World Cup showing, and after some harsh criticism in recent months, Martin Samuel at the Mail believes Three Lions boss Fabio Capello needs to be given a break.

"A life in football being what it is, there will come a time when one of the greats, Sir Alex Ferguson or Arsene Wenger, makes a real mess of the season. Brian Clough, remember, finished not with a bang but the whimper of relegation with Nottingham Forest, the club he led to two European titles.

The equivalent now for a member of the established Champions League elite would be to finish without a trophy and outside the top four. It marked the end for Rafael Benitez at Liverpool, and may one day hasten the departure of men of greater standing at Manchester United and Arsenal.
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Yet even in retreat, it would not be possible to speak of either man as a fool. There will be decades of brilliance, of inspiration and success to be taken into consideration. An appraisal that amounts to 'Useless pillock Ferguson stuffs it up again' would ignore spectacular achievements. Clearly, Ferguson is not useless, just having a bad year. Whatever the consequences, they could never override his past.

Yet for Fabio Capello, different rules apply. Winner of the Champions League and UEFA Super Cup: weirdo. Winner of five Italian league titles at two clubs: gormless. Winner of two La Liga titles with Real Madrid: jackass. All terms used to describe Capello either in reports or banner headlines during the last three weeks.

What is it with the vilification of England managers? Nobody is claiming Capello has not made mistakes. Nobody would argue that, by his standards, England's performance at the World Cup in 2010 was a professional low point. But, come on, Fabio Capello? Gormless weirdo jackass? It rather places the 16 straight seasons of achievement into context. No mean feat for a fool."