So, your team won the transfer window? Well done… but you don’t get a trophy for that Some supporters get more excited about transfers than the football itself – but the summer is over and now the real business begins

Oniomania – the compulsion to purchase items – is the most socially acceptable addiction. A recent estimate valued the advertising industry at $1.3 trillion. It is founded upon deliberate brainwashing: People are told to covet what their neighbour, friend, colleague or rival has; politicians urge us to spend to assist the economy. Bigger, better, more expensive and in greater volume. The sofa store promises that the sale ends tomorrow, but tomorrow never comes. It’s your last chance to buy (until the next time).

The modern pattern is established: See a product online and like it, get bombarded with targeted adverts to establish your desire and then persuade yourself not just that you want the product but a small part of your future happiness depends upon it. And then suddenly your house is full of clothes you had forgotten about, books you’ll never read and weird kitchen gadgets that you swear would make life easier if you could only remember what they do.

English football hasn’t escaped the trend. How could it, when nothing has welcomed rampant commercialisation with arms quite as wide as the Premier League. The transfer window has become a culture of its own, demanding its own coverage, punditry and warped tribalism.

The transfer window is a monster

The creation of transfer windows were intended to compartmentalise football’s business, but in combination with rising revenues it has created a monster. The football season is now split into two parts. In the first, signings are assessed and judged. The second is spent identifying what clubs need to buy in the forthcoming window. It began as deliberate hyperbole, but the joke is nearing reality: some supporters are more excited about the transfers than the football.

The modern pattern is established: See your club linked with a player, get bombarded with micro-information on a possible move to establish your desire and then persuade yourself not just that you want the player but that a small part of your future happiness depends upon your club buying them. And then suddenly your club is full of players out on loan that you had forgotten about and those who you swear might make the team better if you could only remember what they do.

This is not a blanket attack on transfers. Of course clubs need to buy and sell players. Manchester United needed a right-back, and they went out and bought one. The same identification and execution process is replicated across the world all the time. But the obsession with transfers, and using them as a measure of success and failure, has become almost entirely unpalatable.

Transfers are one way, but not the only way. Tottenham were castigated last summer for their failure to buy players, and then reached the European Cup final for the first time in their history. This summer, Liverpool have stayed quiet. They believe keeping what you have – physically and emotionally – is preferable to a raft of changes. Both strategies can work. But some have been indoctrinated into believing one approach is better than the other.

Self-fulfilling mania

The indirect result of rampant consumerism is a deterioration in gratitude for our possessions. If something is easily replaced, our loyalty and fondness towards it drops. So Manchester City buy Claudio Bravo, see him fail and bring in Ederson. And Manchester United buy Eric Bailly and Marcos Rojo, decide they aren’t good enough and bring in Harry Maguire. Footballers become transients, and are treated as such.

Supporters deserve to avoid censure for the transfer phenomenon. If they are willing participants in the culture, they only play the role of customer. Clubs, broadcasters, agents and bookmakers are the advertisers. And so it becomes self-fulfilling: transfer mania fuels fevered interest, fevered interest fuels transfer mania.

The nadir is the concept of “winning the transfer window”, a complete contradiction in terms because there is no competition and the success of any deal can only be judged in hindsight. Previous winners include Milan and Everton in 2017 (Milan went from sixth to sixth and Everton took 12 fewer points) and Fulham in 2018, who were relegated.

To January…

That phrase stems from impatience and the need to draw conclusions and have big opinions in order to drive interest. But it also relies upon a mistruth, that spending money is in itself a positive thing rather than how that money is spent. “Fulham are the highest-spending newly promoted Premier League club” is a statement of fact, not a boast.

The smartest clubs will already be prepared for the new season, sat in the car park having a snooze when the dystopian football Supermarket Sweep took place in the store. Others will be introducing new players to people they have never met 24 hours before they are expected to gel with them over the next nine months.

By Friday morning as you read this, the dust will have settled and the transfer window kings anointed. Hours later at Anfield, the football will begin. At least the mad dash now ends before the football actually begins, rather than overlapping with it and even overshadowing it. We should get a few weeks before the mithering starts over who needs what in January.