Home   >   Opinion   >   The hyperbole and eventual disappointment of deadline day

The hyperbole and eventual disappointment of deadline day

By on August 30, 2015

It is transfer deadline day and scores of “football agents” are lining up to deliver the news that your club is miraculously close to signing half of those “ten players who [insert club here] should sign this summer.”  This news is mainlined into your Twitter feed, and then once arriving home, helpfully summarized by Sky, ESPN, the BBC, or any respectable news channel in more than ample doses.

And so one experiences the circus that is transfer deadline day. (You, lucky(?) reader are likely to have spotted and clicked on this article amidst hundreds of other updates on transfer happenings.) If you were a Manchester United fan in 2013, three imposter club representatives were all over the wires to confirm that the Red Devils were finalizing a move for Ander Herrera. That move indeed happened the following year but for fans drunk on the hyperbole and rumors of the night, there is an inevitable hangover the following morning if your club didn’t sign anyone, or for that matter, signed Wilson Palacios. 

Many clubs simply, and smartly choose to opt out of the last minute circus. Seven, including Chelsea, Manchester City and Southampton, didn’t sign a single player on deadline day in summer 2013, and in January 2014 not one top-five clubs brought players in on deadline day. Clubs have ninety-three better days to complete their summer transfer business and every day gone by is another lost for the new signings to settle into their new environment. For that reason, most  deadline day signings will take a while to bed in and reach their potential anyway.

Yet, as the television channels will readily inform you, many transfers to hold out until glorious deadline day. In Italy, clubs literally set up shop in an internal marketplace to buy and sell players. However, the successful transfers are much harder to pick out. While the Premier League reported over thirty deadline day moves last summer, few made major impacts at their new club over the course of the season. 

For instance, you’ll be pardoned for forgetting that Danny Welbeck signed for Arsenal on summer deadline day last year — he’s currently sidelined by injury — though Manchester United fans won’t soon forget Falcao’s disappointing tenure at Old Trafford. This summer, Chelsea’s signing of Falcao helped push their own deadline day signing flop, Juan Cuadrado, out of the door at Stamford Bridge. And although deadline day signing Daley Blind has cemented his place as a starter for Louis van Gaal at United and Saido Mane was a fixture for Southampton last season, for every good piece of work on deadline day there are ten reports that confirm Queens Park Rangers signed Mauro Zarate and fifty claiming Peter Odemwingie hasn’t signed for QPR.
Hull City fans may have been buoyed by four deadline day signings last summer — more than any other club — but a year later the clubs is back in the Championship.

Of course, the entire ordeal lives on because one late sale can free up funds to unlock another purchase and so on in a cascade of late activity, which the media helpfully amplifies.  Yet just ignoring the whole tantalizing prospect of last minute deals can be the sign of a more prudent team than can a rush of deadline day deals. It’s best not to be too invested in your own team’s deadline day transfer dealing because the circus can be more fun as a neutral in an odd sort of way.

About Alex Morgan

Alex Morgan, founder of Football Every Day, lives and breaths football from the West Coast of the United States in California. Aside from founding Football Every Day in January of 2013, Alex has also launched his own journalism career and hopes to help others do the same with FBED. He covers the San Jose Earthquakes as a beat reporter for QuakesTalk.com and his work has also been featured in the BBC's Match of the Day Magazine.