Beefing up squad now is just a bit of window dressing
The January transfer window is not quite a jumble sale but neither is it a jaunt down Quality Street.
It’s a collection of the unwanted, the hand-me-downs, the cast-offs being repackaged to new clubs all across the country.
The January window is a market for the movers and shakers who can only afford to operate in the bargain basement. Scotland’s football fans will inevitably get excited by it but once again this month it has been a familiar movie.
It’s the Borrowers rather than the Wolf of Wall Street in terms of big-money blockbusters.
The familiar plot lines are all there – panic buys, clubs pushing the button on signing players often sight unseen in a bid to t ransform thei r fortunes. This is a desperate exercise in blind faith.
Ask any Premiership manager about this time of year and the stock remark is of it being a “di f f icult window”. What they mean is it’s frustrating recruiting from a pool of players populated with so many duds.
If you think that’s a bit harsh, I was once that January soldier.
Back in the day a manager called Ian Wallace was in charge of Dumbarton. He once laid claim to the title of Britain’s most expensive player when he signed for Nottingham Forest. He had quite a pedigree but I wouldn’t have known him from Adam.
His plan was that his part-time First Division club would pay the full-time wage which I was on with Clyde until the end of the season.
It was early January and I was no longer on talking terms with the Bully Wee boss so it appeared to be an ideal exit strategy.
There was the not so small matter of my fitness to be dealt with, given that I was still walking with a limp due to the ongoing recovery from a double leg fracture.
These, however, appeared to be no more than minor details during discussions about signing on at the Sons.
That their marquee signing had all the athletic attributes of Long John Silver didn’t seem to matter a jot to them.
So it was off to Boghead for me, picking up a full-time wage at a part-time club with the added pressure of being Dumbarton’s highest-paid player.
It ’s best to ask the club historian what happened next but it wasn’t to be a goal-laden stint.
Which brings us nicely to the words of Barry Fry this week about one- time Scotland striker Jason Cummings.
The Peterborough director of football remains a relic of a bygone age when football was more brass tacks and he said this of his on-loan recruit from Nottingham Forest.
He said: “Jason has become a problem. MK Dons and Lincoln have shown an interest in taking him but he doesn’t want to drop into League Two.
“There are also Scottish clubs chasing him but Jason doesn’t want to move back up there, even though he’s spending all of his time there at the moment. He has no future with us.”
Cummings needs his own Ian Wallace to kick-start his career but he’s not alone.
Managers will try to dress it up differently but if you’re a Ryan Gauld, Ross McCormack or a Peter Pawlett and on the move this month then, in career terms, you’ve ended up in the game’s garage sale.