There was a time when the last day of the football transfer window was A Thing. Thousands, definitely not millions, of people with too much time on their hands would faithfully tune into Sky Sports News to watch nothing very much hosted by ultra camp Scot Jim White. Reporters at Premier League grounds and training grounds would speculate on possible, or usually impossible, transfers and scenarios and repeat them every few minutes. At the end, people would sit and wonder: why the fuck did I watch that?
This year, the entire transfer window yielded a mere £250 million to selling clubs. A mere. That’s how we measure the sheer perversity of the mad money that consumes our national sport. And that’s where it’s got to when we think £250 million represents a minor spend.
Having too much time on my hands before going out last night, I watched the early stages of Sky’s coverage and it was grim. The studio ‘experts’ were Harry Kewell and Jamie Redknapp, the latter replacing, I would imagine, his father ‘Arry, who now displays his talents on television shows in which he eats insects. From the sublime to the ridiculous? No. Nothing sublime about ‘Arry. Just the cheeky chappie nonsense you expect from football’s equivalent of a pub bore.
Meanwhile, Harry and Jamie needed to pad. The generic host whose name escapes me – Jim White doesn’t appear until the latter stages – joshed with his guests, occasionally going across to reporters looking like they would rather be anywhere else informing us there could be late action in the transfer market (spoiler alert: there wasn’t).
We did learn that Odion Ighalo’s loan move from Shanghai Shenhua to Manchester United would see the fading red giants picking up a third of the player’s £300k a week salary. Bargain, I expect one of the TV ‘experts’ said. I come from a world where £30k a year is a generous salary and I simply cannot relate to someone who ‘earns’ ten times that amount every single work. But that’s today’s new norm. No wonder today’s players need a mid season break. It must be exhausting counting all that money.
I left Mr Generic Host in the company of Harry and Jamie, waking up this morning to find that virtually nothing else happened that evening. Doubtless, Jim White was creaming himself as Cowdenbeath unveiled their latest loan signing with just seconds to go before the transfer window slammed shut. On Sky, the transfer window never simply closes: it always slams shut.
The transfer window is the gift that stopped giving many years ago. Only the failing desperates of football throw money at players in January and only the failing desperates watch every second of it.
Move along, nothing to see here sums it all up.
