Stoke City may have to wrap up their transfer business quickly this summer as Premier League clubs prepare to vote on closing the window early – and the EFL likely to fall in line.
The current top 20 clubs will vote on Thursday about whether to set deadline day as August 14, two days before the start of the new Premier League season. The Championship starts on the weekend of August 9 and 10 and League One and League Two will kick off on the weekend of August 2 and 3.
For the vote to pass, 14 of the 20 clubs would need to vote in favour, and it would see the transfer window shortened by around two-and-a-half weeks.
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The proposal, reported by the Telegraph, marks a potential return to the transfer windows of 2018 and 2019, when the Premier League opted to end clubs’ business before the competitive campaign began. The idea was then abandoned, with one of the principal concerns that clubs around Europe, who retained an end-of-August deadline, could unsettle and potentially poach Premier League players without English clubs having the possibility to bring in replacements.
A change in the Premier League calendar would be expected to affect the divisions below. In 2018 and 2019, the EFL voted to fall into line with the Premier League, at least to a degree.
