After enduring a full year in which they were banned from making new signings by FIFA and, as a result of that devastating punishment, only won five major trophies, Barcelona were finally able to resume their transfer market wheeling and dealing with the opening of the January window. So they immediately made up for lost time by signing all of the players. All of them (77 to be exact).

Of those 77, only Arda Turan and Aleix Vidal join the first team, but they go all the way down to Eidur Gudjohnsen’s 10-year-old son Daniel and include nine goalkeepers, 23 defenders, 23 midfielders, and 22 attackers (Neymar is still young, after all).

And the window has still only just been open for a few days. They’re just beginning here. At this rate, they’re going to start signing taxi drivers sometime around January 17 and the person in charge of processing all of this paperwork is going to die of exhaustion on the morning of January 21.

Anyway, maybe now that they have some fresh blood in the door they’ll start to find some long overdue success.*

*I’m assuming that sentence made Man United CEO Ed Woodward cry.