7 Best and Worst Decisions of the January Transfer Window

As the clock struck 11 p.m. on Tuesday night, everyone could breathe a sigh of relief. The deadline for the January transfer window had passed, and the last of the midseason moves could be rubber-stamped.

Now that the dust has settled and we get used to seeing players synonymous with one shirt suddenly wearing another, we can assess which deals look like being shrewd moves and which ones could be viewed at best hasty and at worst ill-advised.

Best: Bobby Zamora (Fulham to Queens Park Rangers, £6 Million)

Since Martin Jol took over at Fulham, it has been quite apparent that the relationship between the Dutch manager and the club's star striker has been fractious at best.

So the opportunity for Bobby Zamora to reunite with Mark Hughes, the boss for whom he enjoyed working with last season at Craven Cottage, just down the road at Queens Park Rangers was one the 31-year-old took with relish.

The target man will greatly aid QPR's fight against relegation as he will ease the goal-scoring burden off veteran forward Heidar Helguson and also create plenty of goals for his new teammates.

Best: Gary Cahill (Bolton Wanderers to Chelsea, £7 Million)

Gary Cahill may have been part of the Premier League's leakiest defence, but he is still a decent addition to the Chelsea squad.

Unusually for an English defender, Cahill is good with the ball at his feet, and should be well suited to fit into manager Andre Villas-Boas' liking for his team playing the ball out from the back.

Villas-Boas has continually backed David Luiz, even in his more madcap moments, but he now has a viable option in his squad should he finally run out of patience with the mop-haired Brazilian. 

Best: Nikica Jelavic (Rangers to Everton, £5.5 Million)

Solving Everton's main problem this season has not exactly been rocket science: They need goals.

Only the teams in the bottom six have scored fewer than the Toffees this season, and they have not notched up more than one in a Premier League match since November.

Step forward Croatia international Nikica Jelavic, who scored an impressive 30 goals in 45 SPL appearances over the past 18 months. Even though him matching those figures south of the border is unlikely, he should provide more than enough cutting edge to win Everton more games. 

Best: David Pizarro (Roma to Manchester City, Loan)

The Chilean's move to England was one of the more surprising moves on deadline day, not least because he joined big-spending Manchester City on a loan until the end of the season. 

The 32-year-old spent a season with Roberto Mancini at Inter Milan during the 2005-06 season, where he won the Italian league and cup double.

The diminutive midfielder may not be the blockbuster signing many anxious City fans would have hoped for, but he is adept at operating in a format based off the midfield with a more attacking mindset than the likes of Gareth Barry and Nigel de Jong. Expect him to make appearances from the bench as City look to close out tight wins in the title run-in.

Liam Ridgewell (Birmingham City to West Bromwich Albion, Undisclosed)

Not exactly a signing to get the pulse racing, but the addition of Liam Ridgewell to the ranks of West Brom is a canny one nonetheless.

The 27-year-old is highly adaptable, capable of operating at full-back or in the centre of defence, and he pops up with the odd goal, too.

A former trainee at Aston Villa, Ridgewell's third Midlands club feels like a nice fit, and one which will give manager Roy Hodgson extra options in defence.

Emmanuel Frimpong (Arsenal to Wolverhampton Wanderers, Loan)

Emmanuel Frimpong immediately ingratiated himself to Arsenal fans when making his all-action full Premier League debut against Liverpool earlier in the season. Despite getting himself sent off as the Gunners lost 2-0, Frimpong's boundless enthusiasm won him plenty of fans.

Such attributes in the 20-year-old, notwithstanding his technical ability, have also made him popular at Molineux since he joined Wolves on loan at the start of the month. 

That the Wolves fans were so moved to boo Mick McCarthy's decision to substitute him on Tuesday night, ironically against Liverpool, shows just how highly they value him after just four appearances for the club.

Best: Papiss Demba Cisse (Freiburg to Newcastle United, £9 Million)

Alan Pardew pulled off a masterstroke in the summer by signing Demba Ba on a free transfer, a move which has so far seen a return of 15 Premier League goals.

So, buoyed by the success of one Senegalese striker on Tyneside, Pardew has signed another in the form of Papiss Demba Cisse from German side Freiburg.

Cisse's record of 22 Bundesliga goals last season and nine in this for a side which consistently toils at the wrong end of the table is more than enough reason to give hope that the £9 million spent on him, the biggest single fee of the January transfer window paid by a Premier League club, will not be a waste.

Worst: Louis Saha (Everton to Tottenham Hotspur, Undisclosed)

Tottenham can always be relied upon to do something on deadline day. The only surprise was that this January their activity was so minimal.

The signing of Louis Saha, despite the low fee and short contract, is very much a gamble. The 33-year-old Frenchman, for all his qualities, is injury-prone and has only scored one Premier League goal all season.

Following Harry Redknapp's recent admission in court that he is borderline illiterate, the rather unfair joke doing the rounds is that he wrote a note requesting that Spurs buy Crystal Palace winger Wilfried Zaha, but Spurs misread it and bought the wrong player.

Worst: Sotirios Kyrgiakos (Wolfsburg to Sunderland, Loan)

Since the big Greek defender left Liverpool for Wolfsburg in the summer, he has made seven appearances in the Bundesliga.

In those games the Wolves kept one clean sheet and shipped 16 goals as they struggled at the wrong end of the table. In addition, Sotirios Kyrgiakos also broke several bones in Dortmund defender Neven Subotic's face with a wayward elbow.

Sunderland have been going great guns since Martin O'Neill arrived, but this deadline-day signing is hardly one to thrill the club's fans.

Worst: Darron Gibson (Manchester United to Everton, Undisclosed)

This may be an outright awful signing, but the jury will be out on Darron Gibson for a long time to come.

True, the former Manchester United midfielder did his old club a huge service as well as his new one by scoring the winner against Manchester City, but that goal did come via a significant deflection.

The Ireland international has quite a strike on him, but when he is not shooting rockets into the crowd behind the goal it will be interesting to see what other contribution he can make on a regular basis.

Worst: Djibril Cisse (Lazio to Queens Park Rangers, Loan)

The flamboyant Frenchman was something of a cult figure during his time at Liverpool, as much for his dazzling array of hairstyles and his Lordship of the Manor of Frodsham as his goal-scoring prowess.

His time at Anfield was affected by a horrific leg break, but his goal-scoring record stood at around one in four by the time he left. 

He scored goals aplenty at Greek club Panathinaikos, but his spell at Lazio in the first half of this season yielded just one goal. He will have to step up his game if he is to have an effect at Loftus Road following his arrival on loan.

Worst: Wayne Bridge (Manchester City to Sunderland, Loan)

Another questionable defensive acquisition for Martin O'Neill, at least it's nice to be reminded that Wayne Bridge is actually a footballer and not just the injured party in a tabloid sex scandal.

However, his time on the periphery at City showed last season when he went on loan to West Ham. 

Despite being a regular at Upton Park—at times even taking their corners and free kicks—the left-back could not help the Hammers avoid relegation, and it is difficult to see how much a 30-year-old lacking in match fitness can bring to the Black Cats now.

Worst: Federico Macheda (Manchester United to Queens Park Rangers, Loan)

Another new forward at Loftus Road, but this one is a hangover from the reign of former manager Neil Warnock.

The young Italian burst onto the world stage with his stunning winner against Aston Villa which greatly helped United to the title three years ago, but he has done little since then to build on that promise.

A spell on loan at Sampdoria last season yielded not a single league goal as the once-great Genoa club were relegated, and with Mark Hughes making his own additions in the striker department he may end up simply clogging up the QPR squad.

Worst: Vedran Corluka (Tottenham Hotspur to Bayer Leverkusen, Loan)

On the face of it, the loan of the Croatian international to Bayer Leverkusen makes a lot of sense.

Vedran Corluka has been starved of first-team action this season following the emergence of Kyle Walker, but the versatile defender remains an asset worth having either for the future at Tottenham or as a saleable commodity come the summer.

However, with Alan Hutton now departed for Aston Villa and Kyle Naughton on loan at Norwich, Spurs have now recognised cover in that position should Walker pick up an injury.