If your club has a big budget, or the lure of top-flight football, you probably love a transfer window. If, however, like me, you follow a team which is not featured on the FTSE or whatever that’s called, you probably don’t.
My brother supports Liverpool. When he was of a ‘knowing age’, Liverpool won things, and he chose to follow them like his friends already did, thus abandoning our real team, and forever being an outcast. We made him leave Suffolk and we haven’t spoken since…That’s not true, he was ten, he could hardly leave, and I was his best man when he got married not when he was ten, he was in his thirties when he married!
I have spent my life correcting him on football, despite his UEFA coaching licence. I have always said he doesn’t support football properly, whereas I do.
He looks at a transfer window in a way I will never manage, “who could Jurgen sign” and “only £30million” are not my phrases, I look at it quite differently. I see a window as a problem. I worry about the big clubs coming and signing our talented players at Ipswich. Our youth system is very good at providing players for bigger clubs to poach. In fact, I have lost count of how many of my heroes moved on when they were “ripe” rather than after 400 games in the blue shirt, or similar. You get the idea.
So when UEFA say the window is open, and it will be for months, I kind of dread any positive football in that time. The vultures will swoop and take the talented players, maybe for a lot of money, but I want to see our team win, and that also needs those talented players. Yes, you can find bargains, freebies and journeymen who play great football, but that only will get you so far, and then it begins again. You are found wanting that special talent who you let go to a lower Premier League club for a small fee with ridiculous add ons if he plays 500 games, scores for England in a World Cup final or discovers the cure for a worldwide disease.
Obviously I am exaggerating, but have you heard the tale of the Premier League player who had included a ‘no space flight’ clause in his deal, in case he bought a seat on one of those galactic flights? Stranger things have happened.
Anyway, back to the point, the window is open, are you spending big or locking the doors and not answering the phone?
