Updated: January 01, 2014, 12:00 AM
In Pictures: Five defining winter moves in Europe football
2012 / Papiss Cisse / Freiburg to Newcastle United: Newcastle had made stirring progress in the first half of the 2011/12 Premier League season, and had become enamoured of Senegalese strikers, with Demba Ba their main spearhead. They decided to partner him with Cisse, signed in January from Freiburg. Cisse promptly scored 13 times in 14 games for Newcastle, who were chasing the league’s fourth spot until the last day of the season.
2011 / Fernando Torres / Liverpool to Chelsea: This was the year the winter window went wild. A dizzying £50m was splashed out by Chelsea on one of the most admired strikers of his era, prolific for most of his career at Atletico Madrid and Liverpool, and a title-winner for Spain. Alas, for Torres and Chelsea, the spark has been intermittent in London. Liverpool can smile now. To replace Torres, they swiftly recruited one Luis Suarez.
2010 / Goran Pandev / Lazio to Inter Milan: The Macedonian striker was in a long-running contract dispute with Lazio for much of 2009. It went to court, he was marginalised, and inactive. Inter swooped, and Pandev, a free agent, joined a club en route to the Italian league title. He scored in his first Milan derby, an Inter win. And then he started, and thrived, in Inter’s first European Cup final victory since the 1960s.
2009 / David Beckham / LA Galaxy to AC Milan: The most-photographed footballer of the century was determined, well into his 30s, to show he could be a pin-up and a serious player. Written off when he joined the USA’s Major League Soccer, he returned in three winter windows to play at big European clubs. The first of two loan spells at Milan, as well as six months at Paris Saint-Germain in 2013, showed he could compete at elite levels.