Over the past couple of days I’ve been trying to decide which were the best deals made by English clubs during this transfer window.

I realise some of you may think that the window peaked when Sheffield United dramatically signed reserve Brentford defender Charlie Goode on loan. But I suspect there may have been one or two that were a tiny bit more significant… Joking aside, in my mind there were three moves that really made me sit up and take notice last month.

The first involved Philippe Coutinho swapping Barcelona for Birmingham. The Coutinho move happened relatively early in the window but remained one of the most intriguing. He may have not had a great time since leaving Liverpool for Barcelona, but you can’t argue against the fact that he is a world-class talent.

Let’s be honest, I don’t think he would have signed for Aston Villa had Dean Smith still been manager. But this just goes to show you what having someone like Steven Gerrard in the dugout brings to the table – not just talent as a manager but the ability to attract names.

Will Coutinho get back to the game-changing levels of performance he regularly displayed on Merseyside? Time will tell. But a goal on his debut showed he’s still got it.

Another intriguing transfer was Dele Ali leaving Tottenham Hotspur after seven years to join the Frank Lampard revolution at Everton. The deal, which is worth up to £40 million, gives Ali the chance to rebuild a career that had all but ground to a halt over the last couple of seasons.

The fee sounds like a lot, but let’s not forget there was a time when Ali was tipped to become one of the greatest midfielders on the planet. It hasn’t exactly panned out that way, but he is still only 25 and he may well thrive if Lampard makes him the focal point of his team.

The third and final of my most significant transfer shortlist is Christian Eriksen signing for Brentford. Like the other two I’ve mentioned, he is a world-class player. The difference is he was at the top of his game before his cardiac incident last summer, not struggling for form and game time like Coutinho and Ali.

If there are no further health repercussions, and provided Eriksen can play without doubts in this head, then Brentford have got themselves a player who all but guarantees they won’t end up embroiled in any relegation nonsense.

So that’s my shortlist of three. So which of those do I think is the best?

It’s hard to say, because all of them are similar style players with similar skills and similar talents. But if you forced me to pick my absolute favourite of the three moves, then I think I would go with Dele Ali.

He may not currently be on the same level as the other two in terms of form, but he has age on his side. If he gets back to his sublime best over the next year or two, then he has the sort of talent that not only wins games but changes entire seasons.

Ali has the sort of talent that not only wins games but changes entire seasons

If that happens, then Everton have a win-win situation on their hands in that he either stays with them and drives them towards the top of the league or he moves on for three or four times what they paid for him.

So Deli it is. Apologies to Philippe, Christian and, of course, the mighty Charlie…

Mason Greenwood

I’m not going to say too much about Mason Greenwood because everyone is innocent until proven guilty.

But there is rarely smoke without fire, especially in this sort of situation, and some of the images and posts going round on social media were utterly appalling and highly incriminating.

I suspect we may have seen the last of him as a professional footballer. What a tragic waste of talent.

Another one bites the dust

Before writing this little piece, I did a quick Google search for “Watford managers”, which the search engine took 0.76 seconds to perform. By sheer coincidence, that is roughly the amount of time a Watford manager gets in the job before the club’s trigger-happy owners move on to their next victim; sorry, appointment.

Okay, I exaggerate, but when Roy Hodgson took on the job last week, he became the club’s 16th permanent manager in the last 10 years. That is an incredibly high turnover, more so when you consider there have been a number of caretakers in that period as well. There was even a short spell when the club had three different managers in just 37 days, which must be some sort of record.

I said from the start – which wasn’t that long ago obviously – that the Claudio Ranieri appointment had failure written all over it. But I still didn’t expect him to come flying out of the revolving Vicarage Road door in just 112 days.

So can Roy Hodgson save Watford from relegation? Well, if anybody can, it’s the former England manager. He may not be known as an all-out firefighter but he will prioritise defence and clean sheets, and those are what you need in a battle at the bottom.

At least in Hodgson’s case, he only has a six-month contract, so he knows his time at the club is limited. And, at the age of 74, he probably isn’t even that interested in anything too long-term anyway.

Then again, this is Watford we are talking about, a club where the length of the contract you are awarded is entirely unrelated to the time you actually spend there…