TRANSFERBIA

Let’s face it, nobody with any sense opens a window in January, it’s far too cold, but alas, here we are once again at the start of another tortuous month of transfer speculation, as we no doubt suffer the ignominy of yet another winter of discontent.

Let’s get something straight from the outset, it’s a month I particularly hate, as my phobia of transfer windows rears its ugly head once more. It’s a month with a stream of unsubstantiated bullshit, with endless online chatter by people that know absolutely fuck all about what’s actually happening inside of a football club’s transfer activity. Being on football Twitter in January is like being stuck in a room with a bunch of gossiping grandmothers nattering about whether Meghan Markle is a bitch or not. They have no real idea, have never met them, are completely detached from the reality of the situation, left looking in from the outside, so they can only prevaricate on what they’ve read in an agenda-fuelled, bent tabloid media and they’re slowly whipping themselves into an angry frenzy.

Except I can’t seem to leave this room, I’m stuck getting drawn into endless debates about how much Kate hates Meghan. The entire conversation is complete and utter waffle, a waste of everyone’s time and it only serves to make us frustrated at something we have absolutely zero control over.

A Spurs transfer window is particularly brutal, deserving of its own Netflix documentary for sure, as rumours turn into debate, which then turn into disappointment, which is then used to berate our owners. Come deadline day, our drama is guaranteed to conclude in a disappointing finale that’d have Game Of Thrones fans shaking their heads at just how far we’ve fallen. What we want, what Conte wants, what we expect and what Levy expects, and then what actually happens are completely different things. We want players that we can’t realistically obtain, we have our expectations lifted up dangerously high by a media desperate to snare your attention and we are always brought down to earth by the realities of our club’s constraints and ambitions.

When we don’t buy Gvardiol there’ll be a meltdown by certain corners of Spurs’ social media, but perhaps Gvardiol wasn’t affordable, perhaps he never actually wanted to join us, perhaps the selling club didn’t want to sell him to us. There’s a billion reasons we may not get him and end up going for an alternative, but because some two-bit website once speculated that Gvardiol was a decent option for Spurs our fans set their little hearts on him, believed it into a weird possibility and any failure to secure his services will be a failure forever placed upon Levy’s shoulders. Then he’ll sign for Chelsea.

I’m sure that every club’s fans suffer a similar fate each transfer window, as a new opportunity to refresh a squad comes around and everyone hopes their club snatches the top stars and sets about improving their chances mid-season. Except Spurs sit in a particular and somewhat uniquely horrible position. We are trying our utmost to compete for trophies, are generally found towards the top of the league and competing in the Champions League, yet our transfer budgets and wage offers are generally short of the clubs we are competing with. This means we want and desperately need the likes of Gvardiol, Vlahovic, Osimhen, and Gakpo, alongside a long list of others, but we will always lose out to our competitors. Except the reality is that we won’t lose out to them – we weren’t ever really in for these players to begin with. This is of course something set to shift as our income streams slowly rise, but for now patience is required. Unfortunately, Spurs fans are out of patience.

And this is where it falls apart. Online journalism, or ‘Churnalism’ to use a more appropriate term for a transfer window, that comes at us from weak websites designed to get your attention and lure you in like the wet fish we are, will spread conjecture far and wide in order to hook our eyeballs onto their online spaces. Deliberately ambiguous headlines, such as “Yes Says Conte, As Tottenham Enter Race For 21-Year Old Wonderkid”, or, “Levy and Conte clash in private transfer meeting”, abound throughout social media. There’ll be zero credibility to the article, no quotes from named sources from within the actual club, and no evidence whatsoever to back up the claim, yet fans will latch onto it like a Pike to a spinner. They’ll hang onto every word, debate it on YouTube, re-tweet it to death and like every lie that’s repeated enough, it’ll become a kind of hardened truth. Except it isn’t true, was never true and never will be true; it was just bullshit tabloid conjecture designed to get you to click through.

This isn’t new of course, it’s been happening for years. “Our owners are a joke, we should have bought Hazard!” the angry fans once Tweeted. “Harry said we were in for him, but Levy was a tight ass!” they’ll assure you. But the truth is Hazard didn’t join us and as much as it serves your narrative about our owners, we couldn’t offer him Champions League football that particular season and Chelsea could. Only a handful of people know exactly how such negotiations fall apart, for all we know it’s just as plausible that Hazard might prefer the colour blue and ‘Arry’s account of it all is just as one-sided.

Anyone assuring you of their truth is full of shit. In reality, transfers are incredibly difficult, a process complicated further by the mid-season January window, as we attempt to lure a player from his current club. There are a thousand moving parts, from the will of the player, the will of the selling club, the funds we have available, whether the player wants to up sticks and move his entire family to England, whether we are attractive to them, the extensive details to iron out in multi-million pound contracts etc. So much has to go perfectly right that it’s somewhat impressive any football club outside of the superclub status manages to secure any decent players.

Either you have to resort to buying quality young prospects that you hope turn into the next Harry Kane, a process that is beset with disappointing gambles, or you risk aiming higher and losing out to Real Madrid, Chelsea, Manchester City and the rest. The only true way forward is to try and turn Spurs into a superclub. We need to be competitively attractive, so when we go fishing for new players we have a chance of snaring their services. This can only be done if you have a world class manager in place (tick), can offer world class facilities (tick), dramatically increase our annual turnover via increased ticket sales and other revenue streams in order to raise our transfer budget and wages (tick), and are found fighting hard in the top competitions (tick).

You see, for all the failed gambles and fruitless negotiations with top stars, Levy has slowly manoeuvred our club into a fairly decent negotiating position. This is the hope all sensible fans maintain. Of course, it’s also the hope that kills us every time a window opens up.

However, the pattern over the last couple of decades, since Fifa introduced a winter window back in 2002, is for Levy’s negotiations to drag on all month, with a flurry of conclusions on deadline day. I get it, using this kind of ‘ticking clock’ tactic helps Levy haggle the price downwards, which is fine if it’s saving Spurs money. That makes good business sense. However, January would be infinitely better for us mere observers were Levy and Paratici to line up all their targets early, get things in place prior to the window actually opening and then draw them to a quicker close on week one. It would certainly save us from getting locked into the room of gossip for the entire month. They must have their shortlist drawn up in advance, so if you want a right-sided wingback, get your targets lined up early, ready to shoot. You want Dumfries, get things moving early. If you’d prefer Porro, warm it up in December. If they concluded deals in week one then imagine how much it would reduce the Churnalism, how much it would remove the speculation and the endless tortuous conjecture. That’s to say nothing of the benefit to the team, as new players could be integrated during January and begin helping the side at what is always a busy period of the season.

Additionally, it’s not just social media’s chatter and Levy’s tendencies that make the winter window a horrible experience. January is traditionally a tricky time to sign anyone truly effective, as few clubs want to lose their better players mid-season. Prices are quoted at a premium, everyone is mid-contract and any enquiry looks desperate (otherwise you’d be waiting until the summer when there’s a natural turnover of contracts). There simply isn’t much decent business to be done. The Summer remains the key month for an effective squad rebuild. January is like an amuse-bouche in between the main courses, as we try to take up any dropped morsels on offer. Unfortunately, an amuse-bouche isn’t very satisfying if you’re starving and Spurs fans are particularly hungry.

However, it’s also worth noting that clubs have secured game-changing purchases in the January window too. There’s no better example than the arrival of both Kulusevski and Bentancur who arrived in the last winter window (albeit last minute once again) and they undoubtedly shifted our trajectory towards an eventual fourth placed finish. Of course, our two Juventus additions arrived on the back of some truly painful conjecture on social media, as the usual doomsayers had them both written off before a ball had been kicked. There are undoubtedly quality bargains to be had, as we can offer a decent but disgruntled player a way out of their club, and we can plug gaps in the squad that can comprehensively change the momentum of our club’s season.

On the other hand, we’ve been one of the only clubs in Premier League history to go an entire window without signing any fresh blood whatsoever. We literally had to endure the fuckwit chatter all window long, only to watch nothing actually happen. That’s the worst case scenario. At least give the wolves something to chew on in order to make listening to their month-long howling worthwhile for the rest of us. No squad is exempt from improvement, not even at the peak of the Pochettino era. There’s always a hole to plug, especially at a team like Spurs, who forever seem a couple of quality additions away from truly challenging.

And with this current Spurs squad there really is no better example of this – just imagine what a top level right wingback and centre back could do to Conte’s team? The gaps are obvious to anyone and everyone and Conte will know this more than all of us. Our club’s ability to knock on the door of a title, but then inexplicably fail to walk through it once it’s opened, has reached legendary proportions over the years. Is there anything more frustrating than watching a team in a constant state of under-building? We gather together enough talent to look impressive, but always remain one or two players short, then when a window opens we fail to grab those few players required and fall short of truly challenging. Right now, Spurs find themselves rebuilt (only a handful remain from the Pochettino years) and we are relatively ready once again, poised to kick on, if only we could use January wisely. If only.

What makes this winter slightly different is that we’ve had a winter World Cup crowbarred into the middle of the season, giving an unusual opportunity for Conte to spend time with fringe players, for meeting up with Paratici to dissect the team’s gaps and to comprehensively focus on specific targets. The World Cup has also been a wonderful showcase, a pre-January shop window, for leftfield targets to be assessed. Everyone now wants a bit of Sofyan Amrabat, Azzadine Ounahi, Ritsu Doan, or Goncalo Ramos. We also experienced the confirmation of the promise that Bellingham, Gakpo and Gvardiol offered us pre-tournament.

The positive hope is that with Paratici now running transfers, (assuming that the Italian doesn’t go to prison for fraud of course!), he will change Spurs’ mid-season fortunes. He managed it well last winter, but we want to know whether the Bentancu and Kulusevski purchases were a one-off miracle, helped further by his connections back at his old club, Juventus, or whether Paratici is indeed the real deal? We could well find out this January. More additions like that, or indeed Romero, and we could go up to another level.

On a very basic level supporting your football team is an emotional experience. We heavily invest our time, money and most importantly commit our lifelong passion to the club. We regularly add on dollops of hope as we desperately hold onto the possibility that we may one day actually win something, anything, and a transfer window only heightens the experience. It’s an opportunity to turn a corner, to raise our standards, to lift us back towards the summit. So much is determined by whether we manage to get Luis Suarez, or conversely, Louis Saha. Whether we grab Bruno Fernandez or Gedson Fernandes. Historically we’ve always settled for the Saha’s haven’t we? Therefore January only serves as an annual reminder of our place in the football hierarchy. We can’t have nice things. We may as well write that on the trophy cabinet.

As January rolls back around, I’m not sure I can cope with the rollercoaster of social media commentary. I want Spurs to step up so badly that I’m bound to be disappointed. My mood only gets dragged down further by the gossiping grannies living on YouTube that hang on every word a 29-year old Italian tweets. Well, fuck Fabrizio Romano. He isn’t that unique. He has no right to play with my hope like it’s a toy, to pluck at my passion like it’s a dead pheasant. There’s only one room any of us need to be locked into during a transfer window in order to get excited or not, and that room contains Daniel Levy, Paratici, Conte and a handful of other members of the Spurs hierarchy. Everyone else is on the outside looking in and whether you like it or not, it will always be cold outside in January. I think I might just stay in bed for a month, as a Spurs fan my transferbia peaks this time of year.