Window Shopping

Excited about the imminent closing of the transfer window?

If, like me, you follow a team in Scotland then the answer will almost certainly be ‘no’. With the window about to slam shut (or any other similar transfer window cliché you can think of to the describe the last day of January) only one deal has taken place in Scotland in January that has involved a transfer fee. Even then the £35,000 that took Dougie Imrie from Hamilton to Paisley was hardly at the top end of the market.

Given the perilous financial state of Scottish football it can hardly come as a surprise to anyone that January has been largely free of transfer activity in Scotland. Few film crews camped outside grounds in Scotland with hoards of expectant fans swarming around them as the midnight deadline draws ever closer.

Transfer Window Deadline Day (such an important event in football is surely deserving of capital letters) is supposed to be a day of high drama. Sky Sports News displays a clock ticking down with the logo ‘time remaining’ next to it just in case we couldn’t figure out for ourselves what it means.

It’s the media circus that surrounds TWDD that truly irks this writer. What compels people to go and stand outside a stadium or a training ground on a cold January night? Were there no TV cameras there would they still turn up in the hope of seeing some star speed through the gates in a car with tinted windows? Are Sky Sports merely reporting the news and, ahem, drama of the day or are they, by turning up with film crews and cold looking reporters in tow, actually creating the drama that they then report on and declare ‘dramatic’?

Just as Christmas Eve can induce panic and generate some injudicious purchases so too can TWDD. The difference is that on Christmas Eve the worst you can do is spend a few quid on a jumper with a garish design upon it that will languish in a drawer until it goes in the charity bag. On TWDD you can spend £35million on Andy Carroll. Just about as useful as a Christmas sweater but a damn site more expensive.