Time for a transfer window rethink

There is a terrible American TV show called Days of our Lives. Unless you have the intelligence of a pre-historic insight, you will probably need an explanation on what the show is. It’s an endless drama that goes on and on and on, and has no end in sight, it’s basically a massive waste of time.

So what does this have to do with football and West Ham? Currently we’re in the January transfer window and we have yet to do any major deals (except for Roger Johnson).

Sam Allardyce has been working round the clock to get players and so has every other person at the club. For the whole of January the focus on has been getting another striker or defender. But this has lead to a massive distraction and we are not focusing on what we should be doing. Playing football.

The on-going soap opera that is the transfer window has seen every man and his dog linked to a move to West Ham. A month is just too long, especially when you consider that hardly any transfer action has occurred either at West Ham or any other club. It’s fair to say that most of the action won’t happen until the last week of the transfer window. 

If you look at the summer transfer window, we did get in early and get most of our deals done, except for Stewart Downing. However many clubs didn’t do much business until the last few days, and the same is happening now. A few players have moved about but it’s nothing compared to what will happen in the next seven.

With this in mind it’s time we did something about it. The January transfer window takes an enormous toll on the clubs resources and on the manager and coaches. While I do agree that there should be a window, a month is simply too long.

If the window was shortened to a week, and no games were allowed to be played this would be beneficial to everyone in the game. Deals would be done, there would be no sitting around waiting for responses, people would get their act together fast because you only have a week to get your team in shape. Players could also have a break, something I feel is very important as by this stage of the season most players are carrying a injury, a week off would do wonders in terms of their recovery, and mean there would be a better quality of football.

While we have had a very unproductive transfer window, there will probably be a few signings in the next week. However the huge distraction that the length of the window presents, as well as the inability for any deals to occur for most of the window, means that the powers that be will have to have a look at this on going soap opera. The question we should ask ourselves is why do we stretch this out for a month when we can just do it in a week and get it over and done with?