Transfer window must turn fans’ stomachs
THE transfer window has slammed shut again, leaving a new set of broken records for pundits like me to ponder.
Scottish football may feel like paupers as they peer at what’s happening on the other side of Hadrian’s Wall.
But after the Premier League’s first billionpound summer, rather than records, the window itself needs to be smashed. Every year it gets more obscene. Last summer, clubs in England’s top league spent an all-time high £870m.
This year, as if it meant nothing at all, they went and beat it by £300m!
With the television money pouring into the Premier League, inflated prices are to be expected.
But when you put the £1.17billion spent by England’s top 20 clubs into worldwide context, things start to look scary.
Let’s take a single club as the first example – Manchester City.
The fees and wages Premier League clubs are coughing up these days must be very difficult for ordinary fans to swallow.
When you’ve got a hard-working dad – or mum for that matter – grafting all week to take his kids to the game on a Saturday, the thought of watching players who earn more in a week than they will in a decade must be mind boggling – or stomach churning.
I’m all for businesses being allowed to pursue profit. But there is something the game’s suits could do to grab hold of a transfer market that looks increasingly like it’s running out of control.
They don’t have to impose maximum wage tariffs, and forget about financial fair play.
The best thing that could be done at this point is to revamp the transfer system itself.
Get rid of the window. Open the market up year-round.
When shrewd guys like Spurs owner Daniel Levy get sucked into paying £30m for Moussa Sissoko on deadline day, it’s a sign all is not well.
I know broadcasters, of which I am one, have turned deadline day into a big spectacle but I don’t think anyone would suffer without it.
Ending transfer restrictions would bring prices down, allow clubs to wrestle a bit of power back from players’ agents, and stop a race to the top that will kill clubs if the bubble bursts.
I’ve never liked the transfer window but now I can think of a billion reasons to kill it.
For football’s – and particularly the Premier League’s sake – the time is now.