Simon Jordan reveals his transfer window fails, including losing Michael Carrick and being trumped by sneaky Delia Smith

Simon Jordan has revealed his most embarrassing transfer window fails, as he explained to talkSPORT why he thinks the January market should go in the bin.

The January window often brings a lot of excitement to fans hoping their club brings some fresh new talent into their team, and there have been some incredibly successful arrivals partway through the campaign.

Luis Suarez and Virgil van Dijk at Liverpool and Bruno Fernandes at Manchester United are just a handful of players who arrived in January and made a huge and immediate impact to teams, although it’s fair that after weeks of build-up, most fans are left more than a bit disappointed.

Nowadays the January window is packed with strategic loan deals and short-term buys to patch up holes in squads, with many teams missing out on signings to their competition.

That’s something Jordan knows all about, having admitted he was snubbed by clubs and players on a number of occasions during his decade pulling the strings at Crystal Palace.

And he revealed his biggest two transfer fails to talkSPORT host Jim White on Thursday afternoon.

“I didn’t like the January transfer market,” admitted the outspoken pundit.

“I’ve said this repeatedly over the years; it’s a window that was a bastion of bad business because in the summer you’re planning and full of optimism.

“But January is just a window of desperation, because most of the time you’re not in planning mode, you’re in rectification mode.

“You’re making decisions where economically you’re getting put behind the gun because you’ve got agents with an egg timer, saying you’ve got 30 days, and you’re sitting there in an auction room bidding against yourself.

“I never liked it and I tried not to do any business if I possibly could. It’s one of those markets where you’re leading with your chin.”

Asked if there were any big signings he was close to getting over the line during his time in charge at Selhurst Park, Jordan had a rather funny story to tell.

“Yeah, there were a few times we did business and a few times where ones got away from us that would have made a big difference,” added the ex-Eagles owner.

“Players like Michael Carrick in the 2004 window. We were in the Premier League and had a deal agreed with West Ham to sign Carrick for £3.5million.

“It might not sound like a lot of money but, don’t forget, West Ham were in the Championship because we left them there the previous year having beat them in the play-off final, and ultimately £3.5m in 2005 money is probably around £25m in 2021 money.”

Unfortunately, though, the future Premier League winner with Manchester United went to Tottenham instead, for around the same fee.

However, that wasn’t Mr Jordan’s most embarrassing January transfer fail…

“We also did a deal for Dean Ashton and I tried to be a bit cute with the fact that I’d gone to Norwich and West Brom, who also wanted the player and were also in a relegation battle with us.

“I told them: ‘Why don’t we agree a price that we’re all going to pay for this player, and rather than let Crewe leverage us, why don’t we all agree a price and then let the player choose his club, that way we’d get a player who wants to play for the club’.

“But, as soon as we all agreed to it, Delia Smith then raised the bar and offered £5m for him!

“So that might have been naïve on my part. Well done Delia, she really cooked up something there.”

That’s the Delia effect…