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Slipperduke

The Camden Cad
Joined
Aug 24, 2004
Messages
4,333
Location
North London
I went shopping today. I bought 150 steaks, 200 eggs, enough cornflakes to swim in and enough milk to drown in. I bought half a vineyard of red wine, a circle of cheese as big as a tractor wheel and a box of ice-cream large enough to sink a ship. I also picked up 40 paperback books and a new pair of swimming shorts for my holiday. Had to get it all in by the end of January because after that I’m not allowed back into the shops until June. Stupid, isn’t it? Still, you’ve got to be prepared. And that ice-cream is raspberry ripple flavour, so everyone’s a winner.

No industry in the world would ever dream of banning trade, so why does it happen in football? I’ve racked my brains while thinking about this column and I genuinely can’t think of a positive aspect of these transfer windows. Poor Kevin Keegan has barely learnt the names of his players and already he has to rush down to the shops to buy new ones. It’s Keegan for God’s sake, he’s spontaneous enough as it is, we don’t need to force the issue. He’s going to hit the transfer market like a dog in a sausage factory. He’ll be like my mum at the January sales. He’ll walk into Mike Ashley’s office laden with carrier bags saying, “I picked up a lovely Defoe for just a fraction of the usual price, plus a nice little Wright-Phillips that was on offer and came with a free Wayne Bridge! It did all cost £30m, but it was half-price!”

Some managers buy too many players, petrified that an injury crisis will cost them their jobs. Chelsea brought in Tal Ben Haim, Steve Sidwell and Claudio Pizzaro in the summer, not to improve their squad, but to protect it. It worked out fine for Chelsea but what about Bolton and Reading? They lost key players, all tempted into reserve team football by the slim prospect of a game or two during the African Nations. They would never have been signed if it hadn’t have been for the window’s restrictions.

I spoke to the assistant manager at a lower league side recently and he said that this time of year was a nightmare. After months of not being able to improve your team, you finally get a chance to bring in reinforcements, but the players are linked like the English housing market. No-one wants to sell before they buy, so if you want to buy a striker, you have to wait until the selling club have found a replacement for him. Usually they’ve already identified their new man, it’s just that they’re waiting for another club to get a move on and buy someone as well. It all gets stacked up like dominoes leading either to a rush of signatures on Jauary 31 or, when one link falls, a lot of unhappy managers.

I’m loathe to every express any sympathy to football agents, but they have a horrible time of it as well. They spend four months of the year dormant and then spend Janaury in a constant state of panic, snorting coffee beans in a desperate bid to go a month without sleep.

It’s sucked all the fun out of the transfer market. I’ll never forget the shock of Keegan’s decision to sell Andy Cole to Manchester United. It came out of nowhere, one gloomy evening and it was the only thing people talked about for weeks afterwards. You need surprises like that in football. These days, the media has got months to find out what every team needs and who their most likely targets are. I haven’t seen a single transfer yet that’s made me spill my tea down my shirt.

Steve Coppell hit out at the concept of a transfer window at the beginning of the month and he hinted that it might actually be illegal. I’m no expert on these things, but I’m fairly sure that it’s a restriction of trade which, as the Bosman Ruling proved, is something that tends to upset the politicians round here.

The old rules were absolutely fine. The only panic came at the end of March when the deadline had to come down to prevent shady end-of-season dealings. For the rest of the season, clubs were free to trade when and where they liked. It’s time for the football industry to stand up and take a sledgehammer to the transfer window. Let’s just keep it open.
 
Shouldn't you be out getting lap-danced and drinking too much alcohol? Seriously, good article, though perversly I like the transfer windows.
 
I like the window purely from the point of view that I can be more of a misarable sod than normal but for a limited period of time.
After the window is shut I can accept that it wasnt to be (yet again).
 
Thats a great article, as normal there SD, I am not totally against the concept of a transfer window, however agree with the vast majority of your point, especially regardin Ben Haim and Sidwell. Its one of those strange things in sport where you cant help but think "there was nothing wrong with that , so why did they change it", another being the offside trap. Worked really well, not we have all this was he interfeering with play bollox!! Your next article perhaps, please feel free to do so :)
 
", another being the offside trap. Worked really well, not we have all this was he interfeering with play bollox!! Your next article perhaps, please feel free to do so :)

Funnily enough, I wrote this three weeks ago!

Change, as Newcastle fans will tell you, is no guarantor of success. Sometimes it's best just to keep things the same. Coca-Cola once changed the flavour of their canned drinks and it almost wiped them out as a global force when millions of consumers screamed out in rage at the unnecessary tinkering. We could do with something like that in football.

In 2004, FIFA tinkered with the offside rule. As it had taken the best part of a hundred years for most people to understand the original one, this could only be a bad move. The old rule wasn't that complicated. Join the shirts of the defenders to create an imaginary line and if there's an attacker on the goal-side of the line, then he's offside. Erm...unless it's from a throw-in...or he's in his own half. But you get the picture.

FIFA thought that was far too simple, so now we have the old offside rule but with added spice. Players are active or inactive, depending on an individual's interpretation. Does he have the ball? He's active! Is he interfering with play? Erm.....

"If he's not interfering with play then what's he doing on the pitch?" asked the legendary Spurs boss Bill Nicholson and he had a point.

Manchester City's 100% home record is nothing but a memory after a controversial midweek goal by Blackburn Rovers. David Bentley swung a cross into the box when David Dunn was clearly offside. The ball arced over Dunn's head and he made a half-hearted attempt to reach it. He failed, but it landed on Roque Santa Cruz's bonce and the Paraguayan, who was onside stuck it away. The linesman flagged for offside. Blackburn went absolutely mental. The linesman's bottom lip wobbled. Blackburn shouted louder. The linesman decided that, in retrospect, David Dunn was inactive and therefore onside and the goal should stand.

A player as generally lethargic as Dunn wouldn't try and jump for a ball if he didn't think there was a chance of him reaching it. If that's not interfering with play then what is? Surely his slowly rising bulk is something of a distraction, something else for the defenders to worry about. You wouldn't want him to land on you, that's for sure.

This is not an attack on the linesman, or indeed on any official. Trying to enforce this new offside law must be like watching a game of pool start and trying to decide which ball moved first from the break. We were asking a lot of linesmen with the old rule, but we're asking for the impossible with this one. Imagine trying to judge who is active and inactive, offside and onside, at speed, with no replays, with 40,000 people calling you names.

FIFA claim that it's not a new rule, it's merely a 'clarification,' but it hasn't clarified anything. It's just made it more complicated and I haven't even started talking about second phase attacking offsides. Ha! Look that one up if you're bored.

Manchester City fans will be devastated at losing their record, but at the end of the day no-one will care too much because it's only Manchester City. Just you wait for the outcry when something like this happens and knocks one of the 'big four' out of Europe. FIFA have to realise that the best way to deal with offside is to keep it simple, stupid.
 
I'm not too sure about the windows, but your points on offside are perfectly correct - watching MOTD with my brother, if a player's offside, I call it. My brother then says he was onside because he wasn't active. I then say something along the lines of WTF? and basically it all gets confusing. Mr Blatter - pray tell, what was so badly wrong with the old rule that this new one came in? (Even the Yankee version's less complex than this!!!)
 
Agreed on both points, the off-side rule is a joke now and is open to much interpretation if you are in an offside position then you are bloody offside!

The transfer window makes it even harder for clubs like us to sign players and I personally hate it!
 
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Holloway pretty much the same analogy about doing his shopping when running down the transfer window a few weeks back on SkySportsNews.
 
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