Window of missed opportunities?

Despite having been around for a few years now, there are still plenty of managers who are averse to the January transfer window.

There wasn’t a single transfer that made you choke on your cornflakes

Hardly a day goes by during this period without one boss or the other bleating on about how it doesn’t help with their preparations and generates uncertainty among their squads. And this January was no exception.

And while I can see their point in certain aspects, we have to remember that the reason this window was created in the first place was to stop clubs buying their way out of trouble during the run-in.

Before the transfer window came into existence, any big club that, for example, suffered a serious injury to their key striker in the final months of the season could just go out and buy themselves another one. (In Manchester City’s case they would have been able to buy another four, just to be on the safe side).

Not only did that make the playing field even more unlevel, it also meant that fringe first-team players would probably never get the chance to make the breakthrough.

And for that reason, if no other, I think the window is a positive thing.

Some smaller clubs argue that not being able to sell players throughout the season hampers their ability to raise cash if they should suddenly find themselves a bit short of readies.

While I understand that, surely a little better financial planning would solve that issue. If you are running short of cash, sell in January rather than wait till the situation becomes critical.

And to the best of my knowledge, you can always ask for special dispensation to sell a player outside the window if you can prove it will save your club from extinction.

Portsmouth asked for it a couple of years ago when they were in deep trouble, if memory serves. Then again, Portsmouth have been in trouble more often than Pete Doherty, so it’s hard to remember with any sort of certainty.

Anyway, this January’s window is now shut and I can’t imagine too many managers will have been unhappy with what transpired, primarily because little or nothing did.

Even in the quietest windows there is normally one or two deals that make you sit up and take notice, but this year it was almost entirely devoid of excitement.

Queens Park Rangers splashed a little bit of cash, as did Everton and one or two others. But there most definitely wasn’t a single transfer that made you choke on your cornflakes.

In fact, the only move I found even remotely interesting was Louis Saha’s free transfer from Everton to Tottenham Hotspur.

I know Harry Redknapp has a reputation for resurrecting stalled careers, but a move for a 33-year-old player who was struggling to get into an Everton team that was desperate for strikers just seems a bit weird.

Maybe Redknapp was just trying to prove to the court that he can be careful with cash when he needs to be…

Making his own luck

If anyone was wondering if Sir Alex Ferguson had lost his touch his Midas touch, then last Tuesday must have banished those thoughts quite nicely.

While Manchester United were comfortably beating Stoke City, their title rivals Manchester City were busy losing to Everton.

And the scorer of Everton’s goal in their 1-0 victory? None other than Darren Gibson, the player United sold them just a couple of weeks ago.

When asked what he thought about Gibson’s goal after the Stoke match, Sir Alex just smiled and said “all part of the plan”.

Now obviously it wasn’t part of the plan and nothing more than lucky coincidence that one of United’s ex-players helped them draw level at the top of the league with City.

But coincidences like that just seem to happen for Fergie. I guess you don’t win all the things he has without fate twisting in your direction every now and then.

Misplaced sympathies?

Like the vast majority of football fans, I found Gary Speed’s death last year incredibly sad.

He was, as it has been widely reported, an all-round nice guy who had the world at his feet, and I think the fact that it just didn’t make a great deal of sense made it all the more shocking.

But last week, as the inquest into his death started, I began to question whether we might not be misplacing our sympathies somewhat. I’m not saying we were wrong to treat Speed’s death with such an outpouring of emotion. I’m just wondering if we might not have gone a little overboard, given the circumstances.

Before anyone accuses me of being callous, allow me to explain the reasoning behind my thinking.

Just a few weeks after Speed was found hung, another former footballer died at a very young age: Gary Ablett. You may recall him playing for both Everton and Liverpool. In fact, he was the only player ever to lift the FA Cup with both teams, a feat that’s unlikely to be repeated.

Yet, Ablett’s death didn’t get one per cent of the coverage that Speed’s did. There were tributes and a few nice things said about the man, but absolutely nothing in comparison to the weeks of mourning for Speed.

Now, of course I understand that Ablett was not a national team manager and not in the public eye anything like as much as Speed. And that obviously makes a huge difference in today’s media-driven society.

But there is another difference that needs to be pointed out here. Unlike Speed, Ablett didn’t take his own life, he died of cancer.

He had been diagnosed with non-Hodgkins lymphoma just 18 months earlier and eventually lost his battle with the disease in early January, at the age of just 46.

Ablett spent the last few months of his life campaigning to raise awareness of cancer, throwing himself into charity work despite his failing health. And he never once lost his sense of humour or approachability throughout his ordeal, replying to tweets from fans and friends right up until the end.

Yet many thousands of football fans, including many who once watched Ablett on the pitch, probably didn’t even realise he had passed away.

I’m not saying we were wrong to treat Speed’s death the way we did. A response like that is inevitable and any feelings of remorse were always going to be amplified by the fact that he was such a public figure.

But, having done a little soul-searching myself, I can’t help but feel one Gary, the one who didn’t take his own life, might have been a bit more deserving of our mass sympathies than the other.

sportscolumnist@timesofmalta.com
Twitter: @maltablade