A Happy New Year sporting comrades, I trust all your holiday seasons were filled with uncontrollable gorging, and the mindless swigging of over priced liquor, while cultivating your back door groove in front of all the festive football. Because if it wasn't, then shame on you.
Straight from festive frollicks comes a penetratingly frosty January, and strolling hand in hand alongside the coldest winter in a decade, comes a month of deception, defamation and outright fabrication, as the January transfer window is upon us.
The Blank Cheques are out
Already, the European super power Manchester City, have banded about cheques like they had never seen money before, being linked with a host of European stars from Kaka, Iker Casillas and Samuel Eto'o, to Scott Parker and Mathew Upson. What exactly should football fans up and down the country believe?
Well, if you are a Manchester City fan enjoy the speculation, it was a few years ago that Stuart Pearce was bringing in Emile Mpenza to solve your goal scoring problems, while you were being linked with second rate, two bob players. Now, the transfer market is your palatial home equipped with servants, and a playground of entertainment for your picking.
But for all the other recession hit clubs, if you are linked with a City target, just forget it. Only last week Yaya Toure, a former target of Arsene Wenger was the subject of a £25 million offer from City. Other clubs just cannot compete.
Economic crisis – is football in a protective bubble?
In this current state of economic depression, coupled with the presence of a bottomless pit of money, isn't the transfer window squeezing the throat of the market even tighter. What exactly is it achieving?
The worry is that the governing bodies that control football, domestically and worldwide, do fervently believe that football is in a protective bubble that cannot be touched by the economic constrictions that the rest of world are struggling to cope with. Is is time for football clubs to put pressure on the authorities to rid us of the transfer window? Most feel, it creates a dis-figured and stretched market which puts clubs, already under pressure to spend from fans, and a need to strengthen, in a worryingly difficult predicament.
Arsenal fans have grown disillusioned and frustrated by Mr. Wenger's decision to run a football club in a sustainable manner, not being forced to pay over the odds for players. Not just Arsenal fans, but football fans across the board must learn not to chastise or lambaste their manager. Fans must look at the bigger picture, because football changes too quickly at the moment to function as a sustainable business model. In three years gooners, you will be having the last laugh.
Best option
However, despite my ramblings on whether the transfer window is right or wrong, I am reliably informed from economists, and I trust them rather than myself, when it comes to financial planning, that the transfer window is the best option for clubs to have the opportunity to purchase players during the season. The only other alternative would be to ban the transfer window altogether, so clubs could only purchase during the summer break.
According to my economy obsessesed brethren, the transfer window brings order and stability to an inflated market place. It allows clubs to prepare for the window and manage their finances, and it gives everyone an equal period of time in which to conduct their business, rather than having a market open all year round.
Without this, richer clubs would have a monopoly of the market and be able to de-stabilise clubs throughout the season. At least the transfer window is a controlled period of time, and it threfore empowers clubs in an age of player power. E.g, a charman knows that if he keeps rejecting offers, there is nothing a club can do after the end of the window.
The soap unfolds
As the market place stays open, more and more cash hungry agents will begin to see the Euro signs, and infiltrate the press with stories that are exclusively designed to make them money. If you wanted one tip to the transfer window, enjoy the speculation, but don't believe a word until the contract is signed. You never quite know if Manchester City are interested. Until next week...