What was your favourite bit of the Premier League transfer window? Was it when clubs with great tradition and history had to overhaul their squads to meet financial restrictions while other clubs, either under current serious investigation or having admitted previous cheating, spent whatever they wanted? That was good fun.
Was it when there was a brief public online spat between two high-profile transfer journalists which itself apparently became noteworthy as a news story in its own right as they traded barbs about each other’s accuracy for reporting information? I won’t lie, can’t even bring myself to joke about that given how depressing it is.
Or was it the deal for Honest Ahanor (truly one in the eye for nominative determinism transfers), who was signed by Chelsea for £40m but not signed yet but sort of signed now, which meant that they got to choose his one-year loan deal to Crystal Palace, which definitely wasn’t a ruse to get around the rules because Chelsea had already loaned a player to Crystal Palace? That was definitely a very cool and normal way for 18-year-olds to be traded.
All summer we were told that this was a “weird window” for transfers: the World Cup causing delays, the domino effect of other deals, nine new Premier League managers, each with long to-do lists and their own transfer demands. Which was all true but then also: every summer is mad and it only seems to get sillier. Weirdness is the default position.
None of this is the fault of players like Ahanor, Bradley Barcola, or Savio, those involved in these multi-million-pound deals. But more than anything, this was the summer when supporters saw transfer nonsense for what it was. The overarching theme was intra-Premier League deals, which itself are a construct of the league’s ludicrous finances.
Premier League clubs want to be seen to be spending big, but to do so they need to sell high too. You can only sell high to other Premier League clubs because they’re the only ones who can afford it and everybody wants to make a statement, which prolongs the same cycle. Soon they’re all trading squad players like stickers as if any of it means anything.
That is the second stage of cognitive dissonance, or course: that any of it actually makes a difference. The assumption is that all this business is improving our squads and setting us perfectly for that assault on two places higher in the table. These are very serious people doing very serious things, remember.
Cut to Brentford 2025-26, losing three key players, having one new outfielder start more than 25 games all season and qualifying for Europe ahead of others who spent hundreds of millions on signings. Are we being lied to? No, forget what those smart, sensible clubs do. We must simply spend more.
This is now an unstoppable monster. The transfer fees jumped again this summer, with £30m now seemingly the basic standard. Wages and payments to agents rise all the time to the point of farce at a time when smaller clubs in lower leagues are struggling. But then the solution to simply share more wealth doesn’t work without agreed limitations and structure because that money would simply end up being spent on the same desperation culture anyway.
As supporters, we are repeatedly shafted by this culture. You miss the days when you had a deeper connection with players and your squad didn’t lose – and then replace – a third of its number every summer. You love the players who display loyalty the most but then can hardly expect it anymore when clubs often treat them as trading units.
Worst of all, we pay for this hot nonsense. This is where your money is going. This is why they charge you more for your tickets every season, despite broadcasting revenues continuing to rise.
In several months’ time, most Premier League clubs will release statements expressing how sorry they are to have to do this; it’s just that costs are going up and we’re all a big family, and that means all helping each other out, right? And we’re expected not to look at the bloke on the bench on £40,000 a week who has played 240 league minutes and ask whether we’re being treated like idiots here.
And the thing is: people really do love the thing that is treating them like idiots. They love it more than the football itself. Transfer culture, its soap opera and its reporting, has become the main sport even when the actual sport has started.
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I’m someone who spends much of their professional life travelling the country in a bid to campaign for and cherish the breadth and depth of culture that I believe makes English football magnificent, unique and worth protecting. I know more than most how much easier it is to sell transfer news than in-depth club reporting. The more successful it is, the more resources are attributed to it and the more the monster grows.
And the worst thing? I’m just as bloody bad. I can consider myself to be snobbish about the culture itself and its vagaries don’t interest me professionally. And yet there I am, 10:30pm on 31 August, on the NewsNow page for Nottingham Forest transfer news trying to parse the clickbait headlines. Pathetic.
None of this is normal. Most of it is built upon bluster and favours. Most of it costs an absurd amount of money and makes amusingly little difference. Clubs could choose to be better and smarter. But don’t expect the circus to close down yet. And it’s got me. And it’s got all of you too.