West Brom director Richard Garlick: New transfer deadline protects integrity of Premier League

Next year, no teams in the top tier will be able to buy any more players after 5pm on the Thursday before the first game of the season after 14 of the 20 clubs voted in favour of the change.

The five who voted against were Manchester City, Manchester United, Crystal Palace, Watford and Swansea City – while Burnley abstained.

But Albion supported the change, and have been championing this move for years.

Garlick, who is the club’s director of football administration, was first asked to prepare a paper on the issue seven years ago by former owner Jeremy Peace.

"It’s something we have always wanted to do,” said Garlick. “Tony (Pulis) has championed this for a long time, certainly in the last two-and-a-half years.

“Jeremy wanted to do it when I first started here and he never changed his mind, John (Williams) and the new board were all supportive of it when it came back up in the summer, and that position hasn't changed.

“It's always fallen down because the bigger clubs have always said if the foreign windows stay open then they can continue their trading after us, it becomes uncompetitive.

“They can still do business and take players from us and we can't improve our squads.

“I think what you've seen over the last few years, and this summer Liverpool being the prime example of having a player who didn't play in the first three matches because there was a suggestion that he was going to go somewhere else.

“Players rightly or wrongly decide to protect themselves and look after where they might be moving to.

“When you've got a team like Liverpool who suddenly feel that situation I think it changes things slightly.”

This season, Liverpool lost Philippe Coutinho to a suspicious back problem for the first three games of the season while he tried to force a move to Barcelona.

Arsenal and Southampton also had Alexis Sanchez and Virgil Van Dijk out for the opening rounds of the campaign amid speculation they would leave.

Albion defender Jonny Evans also missed the opening three games, but both head coach Tony Pulis and Garlick have reiterated that the skipper’s hamstring injury was a legitimate problem.

However, the Baggies director believes the decision to shut the window preserves the integrity of the competition because all the best players will be available for all 38 weeks.

“I’m really quite passionate about this,” he said. “We have a competition and we just can’t have three rounds of that competition played without the best players being available for no reason that they might move. It’s ridiculous.

“The brand of the Premier League needs to have all the best players available, and not just for 35 games. It doesn’t look good for the game, it’s not an image the Premier League wanted to see.

“Also, you’re not going to have embarrassing situations where players are plastered all over your stadium for the first three weeks of the season and then lo and behold they’ve left and you have to scrub it out.”

However, the change only affects incomings, which could, on the face of it, leave Premier League clubs vulnerable to losing their players and being unable to replace them.

But Garlick doesn’t believe that will be the case, and he reckons the decision actually strengthens their bargaining position.

“You say no,” he said. “We are the strongest league in the world, we’re the wealthiest league in the world, we’ve got the richest clubs in the world, apart from Barcelona and Real Madrid.

“Coutinho could still leave, but Liverpool are strengthened by the fact that they can say ‘we can’t replace you’.”

And Albion’s long-serving director is confident Europe’s other leagues will follow suit and move their own window to coincide with the Premier League.

“The mood that I gathered and the intelligence that has come back from people who sit on those European leagues is that they were waiting for someone to do it and once one does it the rest will follow,” he said.

“The Premier League is the most powerful league in the world and arguably if we can't make that change and decide that we can say no to other leagues then we've got a bit of a problem.

“We should be leading on this and this is what we've done. You will see all the other European leagues follow suit now that we've done it, you'll see a domino effect. There's no guarantees that they will but I'd be amazed if they didn't.”

This season, Pulis benefited from seeing Ahmed Hegazi in Premier League action. After being reassured by the Egyptian loanee, he stopped targeting centre-backs and focused on other positions.

So will this decision remove that ability to adapt to changing conditions and perceptions?

“There is an element of that,” admitted Garlick. “But your pre-season preparation should be enough.

“We also have another window in January and that's very much seen as the time to top up, deal with injuries and deal with whatever crisis situation there is.

“There are some people – Arsene Wenger being one – who are advocates of moving that as well.

“That might be a slight step too far, because not being able to sign a player for a whole season when you've got injuries and suspensions would be difficult to do.

“But there aren't that many deals done in January anyway. Clubs don't tend to churn six or seven players in January; there might be one or two because you are still playing.”

Next year, the World Cup is running until the middle of July, which could put a squeeze on the time-frame of deals.

However, Garlick says that is no different to this summer, when the international break encouraged clubs to do their business before deadline day.

“This year the final week of the transfer window, everybody was on international duty,” said Garlick. “It was hard to get stuff done in that final week.

"I know of various deals that didn’t happen – not for us, but other clubs – because players were playing. Players were coming off the pitch, onto their phones, saying what’s happening?

“Tottenham were looking to move (Vincent) Janssen at the end of that window and he was playing against France at the same time.”

Even though the deadline has been brought forward, Garlick is still predicting the same mad rush in the last two weeks of the window. And the Baggies will still need to wait their turn in the feeding frenzy.

“That 12-week cycle will still be there,” he said. “We will get some deals done and then we will still have to wait for things to happen.

"Tony's talked about the bigger clubs doing their deals and then it sort of filters down. That will always be the case.

“If you have a piece of homework that’s in on Friday, and you get given it on Monday, you don’t do it Monday night. You’ll do it Friday morning, or Thursday night.

“That’s just human nature. Whatever date you set, Jim White will still have his yellow tie on the day and you’ll still have all the clamouring beforehand. It’s just that we won’t have played any games.”