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One Transfer Deadline Was Never Enough Was It

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You’ve got to love the football authorities, if transfer deadline days weren’t ridiculous enough already – they’ve now begun to breed.

Following the Premier League’s decision to close the transfer window early from next summer – Premier League Agree Transfer Amendment for 2018/19.

In short, with transfer saga’s involving Phillipe Coutinho, Virgil van Dijk, Alexis Sanchez and others, the Premier League looked for stability and believed by a majority that closing the transfer window before the first ball of the campaign had been kicked, that would allow managers and clubs to create better plans for the season ahead and kill the speculation linking people with a move once the season had begun.

It must be said the Premier League only got a majority vote, there were dissenters who voted against the change.

The EFL’s decision is broadly similar with stability being quoted – EFL Clubs Agree Early Transfer Window Closure.

The permanent transfer window will now close at 5pm on Thursday August 9 and the Premier League and EFL are now aligned on that score.

However, the plan has issues because the window will close ahead of the season kick off in the top flight, but after the first round of fixtures in the EFL.

Moreover, whilst the early permanent window ceases purchases, there are clubs abroad to consider and European and Worldwide leagues are now more out of sync with us – so although it may more effect the Premier League and Championship levels to a lessor extent, it will do nothing for the speculation and disruption from foreign interest.

If anything it simply forces club into making quicker moves for permanent captures, with the obvious further hike in transfer fees that will bring, and of course the richer clubs in the game gain an advantage on that front.

I can find no confirmation of this, but EFL clubs in making their change can still sign players on a standard loan with an agreement to buy until August 31, so again that won’t temper speculation or disruption from foreign markets and nor will it achieve such in domestic markets, it will delay a permanent transfer and drive the price up, and I presume the Premier League change may contain a similar stipulation as clubs will undoubtedly still want a pathway for youngsters to gain experience, so it potentially keeps that door open.

So is that really going to reduce elements of uncertainly and players being unsettled in the domestic market after the season has begun? Clubs will just be forced to pay a higher loan fee surely and again that will benefit the richer clubs in the pyramid.

In an attempt to create some level of fairness and sense, they’ve succeeded in further complicating things, and given what this change was supposed to achieve – I don’t think they could’ve missed the mark by a wider margin in they’d set out with that aim.

We now have multiple transfer deadlines during our domestic season, let alone the – albeit smaller – impact of foreign deadline days and short of further artificially inflating the fees for a bunch of people who kick a ball around for a living, whilst the caveat of ‘loan to then buy’ remains open, it achieves absolutely nothing else in the process.

Am I missing something, as I really don’t see what this will achieve?

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