Seven Premier League players who need a January move, with Man Utd duo heading the list

Michael Graham
12 January 2022

Dele Alli, Marcus Rashford, Todd Cantwell, and Ross Barkley

Premier League clubs may be reluctant to let players go in January with the ever-present danger of a Covid-19 outbreak to guard against, but some players really look like they need a move.

January is a notoriously bad month to add real quality to your side if you're a Premier League club.

Managers generally don't want to sell midway through the season, and the constant threat of Covid-19 outbreaks means most clubs are hoping to maintain a larger squad than they would normally.

However, there are plenty of players who look like they really need a move this month, and we take a closer look at seven of them.

Marcus Rashford

There is something very badly wrong with Marcus Rashford right now. We can all see it.

Whether it is a hangover from his summer penalty heartbreak with England or something more, the Manchester United forward looks a fraction of the player we have come to expect.

He has just three goal involvements (two goals and one assist) so far this season compared to 20 during the 20/21 campaign (11 goals and nine assists).

What is much more worrying, though, is how passive he appears to be in matches this season.

In Manchester United's 1-0 FA Cup win over Aston Villa, Rashford made just 25 passes in 85 minutes and failed to deliver a single cross.

There is no reason why Rashford cannot turn himself around at Manchester United, but perhaps he has reached a point in his career where changing clubs is the most immediate method to reinvigorating his game - particularly with a World Cup fast approaching.

Jesse Lingard

Staying with Man Utd, it's increasingly difficult to see Jesse Lingard being the player we know he can be as long as he persists at Old Trafford.

Lingard showed at West Ham last season how brilliant he can be when he is given regular game-time, and has to be admired for wanting to give his Man Utd career one last shot on the back of that.

It hasn't worked out, though. Lingard has been a peripheral figure at best at Old Trafford this season, playing just 87 minutes of Premier League soccer.

Lingard is in the same boat as Rashford in one important sense. He was a late cut from England's Euros squad last summer and his World Cup hopes won't be served by spending his prime years sat on United's bench.

Tanguy Ndombele

Frenchman Ndombele arrived at Tottenham for a club record fee of £53.8million in 2019, and it's fair to say that both club and player have persisted to try and make the move work.

However, the situation reached tipping point this week when he was replaced during the FA Cup clash with League One Morecambe, with Tottenham fans booing him off the pitch.

He managed to make a bad situation even worse by leaving the pitch remarkably slowly.

That Spurs fought back from 1-0 down to win 3-1 in his absence didn't help his cause either.

His effort and attitude has been called into question before by Jose Mourinho and Antonio Conte is not a man to accept a player not giving his all.

The major stumbling block will be finances. Tottenham reportedly want to recoup as much as £30million for the flop, and he is believed to be on a £200,000-per-week deal with the London club.

He needs a move, though, and it's likely he knows it. After all, that reputation isn't going to repair itself and he may have just ran out of chances at Tottenham.

Ross Barkley

A few years ago, Ross Barkley appeared to have the world at his feet. He had established himself in the Premier League and earned a big-money move to Chelsea.

He initially started well at Chelsea but his Premier League minutes have steadily diminished ever since. He played 1,241 Premier League minutes for the Blues in 2018/19 and then 1,104 in 2019/20.

That dropped off almost entirely the following season, with him moving to Aston Villa on loan for the second half of the season. In 2021/22, he has racked up just 151 minutes of Premier League soccer.

The good news for Barkley is that he is unlikely to be short on takers should he decide to move on. He is still only 28 and helps a club satisfy their homegrown contingent requirements.

Wanting him and being able to afford him don't necessarily go hand in hand, though, so there is a good chance he could hit the loan market again before a permanent move in the summer.

Divock Origi

Origi is a very tough player to judge in many ways because the Belgian has almost singlehandedly redefined what being a success at a club means.

He is in his seventh season at Liverpool and has started just 26 Premier League matches in that time.

What Origi has had no shortage of at Liverpool, though, is big moments. He scored a 96th-minute winner in the Merseyside derby, he scored twice against Barcelona in the Champions league semi-final and another in final.

That is just a small selection too, with Origi scoring big goals, often in injury time, to endear himself to the Anfield faithful.

Still, at some point - and that point usually comes in a World Cup year - players just need to be playing regularly. That time has surely come for Origi and it's unlikely Liverpool would begrudge him a move to facilitate it.

Dele Alli

You'd have to say that Dele Alli is one of the greatest enigmas in soccer right now.

Alli made an immediate impact after joining from League One MK Dons as a teenager in 2015. He quickly established himself as a key part of the Spurs team and it didn't take him long to become a vital part of the England team too.

Recent years have brought struggles, though. After scoring 18 Premier League goals in 2016/17, his end-product dropped by at least half in each of the next three seasons.

A lack of goals and assists has, quite naturally, transitioned into a lack of opportunities in the last two seasons, and he has played fewer than 1,300 Premier League minutes since the end of the 2019/20 campaign.

Antonio Conte has given Alli a chance to reinvigorate himself this season, but one goal from ten performances suggests that it still isn't working.

The good news for him is that time is very much on his side. Alli is still 25 so he could move on to become a bigger fish in a smaller pond for a couple of years, rebuild his confidence, and still have plenty of years left at the top.

Todd Cantwell

Cantwell has been a key player for Norwich since his breakthrough in 2018/19 but he has fallen a little out-of-favour this season.

The last time Norwich were a Premier League club, Cantwell won many admirers as he established himself as a busy, bustling, mobile central midfield player.

He appears to have stagnated since, though, and has featured just eight times in the Premier League this season with most of his opportunities coming from the bench.

Leicester and Newcastle have been linked with him, and although Dean Smith has stressed he wants to keep the player, a move seems a better option all-round.

The energy looks like it has drained from his game, and that was always his greatest asset. If he wants to regain that, then a fresh environment is probably the only solution.