Jerry Seinfeld used to perform a stand-up routine about aeroplane travel in which he addressed that irritating habit pilots have of informing passengers exactly how they’re going to get them to their destination. It’s the utter pointlessness of it all that perplexed the comedian – the excruciating minutiae of the cruising speed and altitude the pilot plans to reach, the direction the wind is blowing, the left turn he’ll make over Pittsburgh, followed by the right over Chicago before he takes the plane down to 15,000 feet. “He’s giving you the whole route; all his moves,” Seinfeld observed. “And we’re sitting in the back going: ‘Yeah, fine – just do whatever the hell you gotta do to get us where it says on the ticket.’”

Those of us with no particular interest in the byzantine machinations of the increasingly ridiculous annual spending frenzy that is football’s summer transfer window can feel Seinfeld’s pain. We don’t care which players assorted clubs are trying to sign and how everyone involved is going about it, but are content to simply wait for the dust to settle and find out who went where. Try as we might to ignore the countless reports and rumours, often fed to favoured newsmen by players, agents, club spokesmen and assorted other hucksters with self-serving agendas, such is the ravenous public appetite for transfer “news” that resistance is increasingly futile.

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The ubiquity of informed and uninformed media tittle-tattle has rendered it inescapable even when such enjoyable alternatives as the summer Tests, Wimbledon and Le Tour are on hand to provide welcome palate‑cleansers at a time when there is no football. Well, in a world where there is never no football, as little meaningful football as it is possible to have before the new season begins and those of us who enjoy the comparative tranquility of the close season can return refreshed and enthused by the prospect of the imminent football grind.

In an era when the Premier League’s annual summer transfer arms race seems to have eclipsed even the FA Cup in terms of fan interest and prestige, those of us driven to the brink of madness by the white noise generated by players, clubs and their “people” are made to feel in some way inadequate because of our lack of enthusiasm regarding Tottenham’s inactivity, Manchester City’s spending or Neymar’s next move. It’s as if not caring about such matters means we mustn’t actually like football, when nothing could be further from the truth. We like it very much; love it in fact but could do without the ludicrous hoopla that surrounds it when none is being played.

And increasingly, it’s a particularly football thing. Most restaurant patrons don’t feel the need to obsess over how their food was sourced to enjoy whatever meal that arrives from the kitchen. Movie enthusiasts don’t care how difficult it was to sign up Al Pacino for Scarface but can appreciate it’s a damned fine flick. You don’t need to understand exactly what’s going on under the bonnet of a Ferrari to appreciate the pleasing sound of its engine’s distinctive growl. By contrast, football has reached such a preposterous point of saturation that needless fretting and hand‑wringing over how exactly and at what cost your team is assembled has become as stressful and time-consuming a pastime as watching that team play.

When this column is appointed president of Fifa, a blanket ban on transfer speculation, baseless or otherwise, will be one of its earliest sweeping reforms. As plans go it is obviously deeply flawed and utterly unworkable, but no more so than many of the wheezes embarked on by football’s world governing body in the past. Come this brave new dawn, instead of spending the summer hiatus monitoring Sky Sports News, the internet and various contradictory newspaper reports for rumour and counter-rumour regarding “summer swoops”, football fans will be forced to endure a total media blackout on transfer activity before a considerably more exciting Big Reveal on the season’s opening day.

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An occasion already suffused with optimistic uncertainty, at least until your team find themselves 3-0 down at half-time, it could only be improved by the thrill or crushing disappointment that would go hand in hand with scanning the matchday programme while the PA guy announces the lineup to discover who is and isn’t in your club’s squad. Imagine the shock and subsequent awe of all those season‑ticket holders at the Bet365 Stadium on discovering they’ll actually have multiple opportunities to find out if Leo Messi can really do it on a wet Tuesday night at Stoke.

An insightful man, Seinfeld also had the inherent ridiculousness of the transfer system covered long before football’s biannual trolley dashes were introduced. “Loyalty to any one sports team is pretty hard to justify,” he said. “The players are always changing, the team can move to another city … you’re actually rooting for the clothes. You are standing and cheering and yelling for your clothes to beat the clothes from another city.”

Not that there’s anything wrong with that, to borrow an iconic phrase from the New York Mets obsessive’s eponymous sitcom. It’s the constant, unavoidable drip-feed of information and misinformation regarding who will or will not be dressed in those clothes that has become – no pun intended – wearing. Isn’t it time all these clubs, players and agents just did whatever the hell they gotta do to get us where it says on the ticket?