Fire up the fax machine! It’s nearly transfer deadline day!
Will your club snap up a bargain before the window slams shut?
Will they land that striker they desperately need?
And will any television reporter have a sex toy shoved in their ear like Sky Sports’ Alan Irwin did back in 2017?
All these questions and more will be answered before 11pm tomorrow night.
In the meantime, here’s why we love transfer deadline day…
1) THE ENDLESS RUMOURS…
In this day and age, where social media is all-powerful, it only takes someone to tweet about a bloke who looks a bit like Lionel Messi in a B&Q in Huddersfield and the rumour mill goes into overdrive.
Tall bloke with a ponytail seen buying a jumbo sausage roll at Charnock Richard services?
Andy Carroll on his way to Wigan, obviously.
Man with hairband spotted buying an Italian phrasebook in WH Smith?
Jeff Hendrick’s off then.
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2) THE DEALS THAT DON’T GO THROUGH
It’s always enjoyable to see a deal collapse, especially if it’s a player your team’s rivals have been banking on.
It could be a problem with the paperwork as it was with David De Gea’s failed move to Real Madrid in 2015.
It could be missing the deadline by mere seconds, like Leicester did with Adrien Silva five years ago.
The midfielder couldn’t play for the Foxes for six months after they handed in documents for his signing 14 seconds late.
Or it could be just getting the wrong end of the stick, as Peter Odemwingie did when he turned up to sign for QPR in January 2013 only for the club to refuse him entry to the car park.
3) THE 11TH HOUR MADNESS!
If you believe everything you read, hear and see as transfer deadline day comes to its dramatic conclusion, you’d be forgiven for thinking that it’s like some Hollywood action movie.
Players fly across the country in choppers.
Agents pull strings and call in favours.
Megabucks offers and counter-offers are thrown this way and that.
And everyone is frantically trying to make deals happen.
Even though they’ve had a whole month to do it.
4) THE DEALS GET EVER MORE COMPLICATED…
Undisclosed fees. Release clauses. Swap deals. Money plus player. And we’ll chuck in Asmir Begovic.
As the deals that become more complex, so the use of clichés increases exponentially.
Snags, stumbling blocks and sticking points.
Bids being hijacked.
Price tags being ‘slapped’ on players.
Dotting the i’s and crossing the t’s.
And yes, I’ll be using all of them – and more – on transfer deadline day.
5) THE LAUGH-A-MINUTE LATE SHIFT FOR TV REPORTERS…
It’s cold. It’s dark. And you’ve got to stand in car park at a training ground in the middle of nowhere giving live updates on a transfer that nobody really cares about.
If you’re lucky you have may have some news to report.
If you’re unlucky, like Sky Sports’ Irwin, you may have some company.
Or Mark McAdam too, who once had a sex doll shoved in his face.
6) THOSE AWKWARD NEW SIGNING INTERVIEWS…
If you’re playing Transfer Deadline Day Bingo make sure you keep an eye out for the player that leaves a big club for what is clearly a smaller one and tells the press that when he “heard that Watford were in for me it was a no-brainer.”
Nailed-on to happen, you watch.
7) YOU CAN WATCH SKY SPORTS NEWS ALL DAY…
And never once take a moment to question how your life’s panned out as you read about Coventry City’s pursuit of an Estonian striker (with a name you can’t pronounce) scroll across your screen for the 18,000th time that day.
Legendary presenter Jim White built a reputation for his epic stints on our screens for what seems like every deadline day in memory.
And although he left Sky last year, White is still going strong on talkSPORT.
But who could forget that iconic yellow tie?
Source: Soccer - thesun.co.uk
