The Winter transfer window was met with harsh criticism when it was introduced in 2003/2004, with lower league managers even claiming it could drive clubs out of business. I was annoyed mainly because the thought of not being able to sign a player whenever I wanted on Football Manager ruined my whole fantasy and it put me off playing it for a while. If only it had been introduced earlier, it might have had as equal an impact on my virginity as it did World football. Since then, it has become an accepted annual occurrence and there’s a generation of fans, who as well as seeing Gary Lineker as a TV presenter and Ian Botham as a bloke off the Shredded Wheat adverts, do not know any different. Attitudes within football towards the window seem not to have changed though, with many clubs refusing to admit that they need that New Year boost. So it begs the question, how often does strengthening in January actually work?
It was perhaps a bad omen, and a massive point in the ‘no’ column, that two of the high profile signings of the first UK January window were Robbie Fowler and Jonathan Woodgate, who much like that girl from My Girl never really hit their potential (you know what I am getting at), even if Woodgate was a good bit of business for Newcastle. However, people are all too quick to jump on the bandwagon and mention the January failures such as Andy Carroll or Fernando Torres, in 2011 with selective memory forgetting the success stories. It’s just another myth for people who don’t really know much about football when they want to join in the conversation. Terrible transfers aren’t seasonally selective, managers don’t suffer from S.A.D., poor decisions are made in the Summer just as much.
Then there are the managers who like to have the air that they don’t need the window. Alex Ferguson has managed to conjure up an image of being too good for it with people across the country claiming Fergie doesn’t sign in January and certainly not any players over 30 (Andy Goram seriously disputes the latter). This snobbery fuels fans with it being seen as tacky bringing a hoard of players in the New Year or even that it admits defeat in the squad you assembled in the first place. There’s truth in both. In Hearts’ Romanov heyday (if you count not winning anything but spending loads a heyday) the club once brought in 10 players in January alone, which is funnily enough what the size of their squad could be come the Summer. It’s true, no one was impressed not least the bloke who prints the shirts. It may of course have been overshadowed by my historic attempt to start a chant away at Motherwell. (In the height of their unsuitable ground problems and our managerial crisis I decided a Jay-Z homage of “We got 99 problems but our pitch aint one” was a future hit. It wasn’t). Fans at clubs like Man Utd go with the latter claiming they don’t need to strengthen and rarely do but additions like Nemanja Vidic and Patrice Evra definitely made impacts on the title race and beyond, proving their claims wrong.
The fashionable and acceptable way to do business in January is the shrewd pre-contract agreement. This way you can keep fans happy without facing the ignominy of panic purchasing. They of course can be just as prone to failure but the lack of money spent and the delayed excitement mean that it can generally go unnoticed. After all Transfer Fee x League Position = Rate of Pressure. (This is not a bona fide formula). One of the more successful pre contract of recent years has been Manchester United’s capture of one Christopher Lloyd Smalling, now an England International. Sadly when I read the headline my phone didn’t fit it all in and I was frankly disappointed when I saw the picture having read “Man U sign Christopher Lloyd” which would have not only broken Fergie’s over 30 policy but also shit Chelsea and Man City right up with the addition of time travel to his front line.
Of course, our favourite part of the window is the fantastic panic on the last day with no manager wanting to pull the trigger first. Students have turned it into a drinking game on deadline day, it has become such a fixture in the calendar. Carlton Cole will be linked to someone for 10 million, Celtic fans will tie themselves to a player in another stratosphere because they’re ‘a big club’ and most clubs in Scotland will cross their entire anatomy hoping they don’t lose half their squad. It’s an entertaining day and makes the cynic in you wonder whether it was invented by Sky just so the the graphics team on SSN can use up their annual budget. Either way, I’m a fan and roll on the 31st.
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About the Author
Craig started performing comedy in 2010 and has since been scaling the stairs of comedy at the rate of Thora Hird in the Stannah adverts of the 80s. Not content with not setting Scotland alight with his musings, he has since moved to London to barely amuse an entirely new nation. As a student, in 2005 he won the BBC Student Sports Broadcaster of the Year and followed it up in 2006 with the BBC Student Comedy Broadcaster of the Year. In 2007, he was a finalist in BBC Talent’s Witty and Twisted competition and he has written for various blogs including journaling his own trip around the UK exploring Britain’s fascination with curry at www.landofhopandtandoori.co.uk (this is sadly not a joke).
Despite being English, Craig has been a season ticket holder at Hearts for over ten years but can put on a decent accent at away matches so as not to be turned on by the locals. Having only supported Hearts since 2000 when he moved to Scotland, he has the pleasure of not knowing or caring who Albert Kidd is but has had the misfortune of knowing or caring who Eduard Malofeev is.
Follow Craig on Twitter: @CraigHazell
