wanted to gauge people's views on this issue as to whether the transfer window should end a month early before the season gets under way. The question assumes this is possible and that all leagues across Europe would do the same.
Roberto has said for the past 3 summers how unfair this is on fans and the club when someone ie United or Chelsea come in for stones / Fellaini at the last minute and heavily disrupt the player and everyone else. To be honest I do agee with him in this respect but we've done quite well out of most of those deals and (arteta aside!!) always managed to reinvest before that window closes. It plays to the advantage of the richer clubs who more often than not will cause as much fuss and hype as possible to get their man, to the detriment of the selling team over the first 4/5 games of their season, regardless of whether they end up selling or not (in the case of stones).
That aside its actually not that which worries me most, the general state of the window and what it has become is to the detriment of the game. Don't get me wrong I used to love deadline day, it was actually exciting constantly checking the news! It just seems the last few seasons it's gotten out of hand, particularly with respect to sky's coverage, I mean there are adverts on tv for it... FFS. It's compounding the point roberto is trying to make, the distraction and pressure being put on players is immense. I can't pretend to know what's going on in John stones mind but I can't help but feel that players happy at clubs may/are being pressured into moves, all to sell papers and fill screen time. Imagine if you were that young players, fresh off a fantastic season, enjoying your game and then all of a sudden this storm of ex-pro's decend telling anyone that'll listen you need to move now, you'd be stupid not too, you can't stay! I can't say in that position I wouldn't panic myself! Fantastic players, who've had great careers and won it all telling you what to do, albeit under there new role as 'football expert' for newspaper X and Y. Again creating hype for the sake of selling papers, I mean someone will get a 3 match ban for swearing in a news conference and 'bringing the game into disrepute' but sky do what they want and we've forgotten that there's a game on!!! If anyone listened to 5live before before 1st leg of United gane vs Brugge, it was 1hours buildup about who Utd would buy to partner Rooney!
My biggest worry of all falls with sky, in particular the fact that they have sky bet. All this circus and rubbish rumour come and go. All the while they're taking bets on who Charlie Austin will end up at. I use that example as a few weeks ago he was nailed on to turn up at finch farm, now Utd are odds on favourite! Surely, this isn't right? The more rubbish they drum up the more money they make, who cares if X at west brom is unsettled or if Sunderland have got a game tomorrow?? Maybe that's just me being cynical??
Personally I side with roberto, I can't see a single benefit of the window being open after the fist ball is kicked. You may say it gives an extra month to do deals, especially with euros or world cups, but at the end of the day if you give someone 3 months to do a job they'll do it in 3 months. I also see why it would be more fair if it finished before the season starts, particularly in levelling the playing field across the league to some small degree. With no games means less pressure on the player, there aren't pre match pundits talking about you for an hour every week. Less likely to try to force a move, the manager isn't going to have to leave him out for a big game because his head isn't right!
Anyway that's my 2 cents, interesting to see what everyone else thinks. Although I will say this, favourite bit of sky coverage in the last few years was deadline day seeing that reporter at finch farm get hit with the purple dildo...
Roberto has said for the past 3 summers how unfair this is on fans and the club when someone ie United or Chelsea come in for stones / Fellaini at the last minute and heavily disrupt the player and everyone else. To be honest I do agee with him in this respect but we've done quite well out of most of those deals and (arteta aside!!) always managed to reinvest before that window closes. It plays to the advantage of the richer clubs who more often than not will cause as much fuss and hype as possible to get their man, to the detriment of the selling team over the first 4/5 games of their season, regardless of whether they end up selling or not (in the case of stones).
That aside its actually not that which worries me most, the general state of the window and what it has become is to the detriment of the game. Don't get me wrong I used to love deadline day, it was actually exciting constantly checking the news! It just seems the last few seasons it's gotten out of hand, particularly with respect to sky's coverage, I mean there are adverts on tv for it... FFS. It's compounding the point roberto is trying to make, the distraction and pressure being put on players is immense. I can't pretend to know what's going on in John stones mind but I can't help but feel that players happy at clubs may/are being pressured into moves, all to sell papers and fill screen time. Imagine if you were that young players, fresh off a fantastic season, enjoying your game and then all of a sudden this storm of ex-pro's decend telling anyone that'll listen you need to move now, you'd be stupid not too, you can't stay! I can't say in that position I wouldn't panic myself! Fantastic players, who've had great careers and won it all telling you what to do, albeit under there new role as 'football expert' for newspaper X and Y. Again creating hype for the sake of selling papers, I mean someone will get a 3 match ban for swearing in a news conference and 'bringing the game into disrepute' but sky do what they want and we've forgotten that there's a game on!!! If anyone listened to 5live before before 1st leg of United gane vs Brugge, it was 1hours buildup about who Utd would buy to partner Rooney!
My biggest worry of all falls with sky, in particular the fact that they have sky bet. All this circus and rubbish rumour come and go. All the while they're taking bets on who Charlie Austin will end up at. I use that example as a few weeks ago he was nailed on to turn up at finch farm, now Utd are odds on favourite! Surely, this isn't right? The more rubbish they drum up the more money they make, who cares if X at west brom is unsettled or if Sunderland have got a game tomorrow?? Maybe that's just me being cynical??
Personally I side with roberto, I can't see a single benefit of the window being open after the fist ball is kicked. You may say it gives an extra month to do deals, especially with euros or world cups, but at the end of the day if you give someone 3 months to do a job they'll do it in 3 months. I also see why it would be more fair if it finished before the season starts, particularly in levelling the playing field across the league to some small degree. With no games means less pressure on the player, there aren't pre match pundits talking about you for an hour every week. Less likely to try to force a move, the manager isn't going to have to leave him out for a big game because his head isn't right!
Anyway that's my 2 cents, interesting to see what everyone else thinks. Although I will say this, favourite bit of sky coverage in the last few years was deadline day seeing that reporter at finch farm get hit with the purple dildo...
just let QPR or burnley dispatch San Marino and we can knock off a good few weeks!
