Tomorrow is the final day of the January transfer window and, like the rest of you, I am hoping it is packed with drama, surprises and last-minute mega-deals. But if the rest of last month’s window is anything to go by, I don’t think we should hold our breath.

At the time of writing, only a handful of major deals have been done, with Wilfred Bony’s £28 million (€37m) move from Swansea to Manchester City being the most dramatic. All the other main players have been relatively quiet so far, with just a little bit of dabbling here and there.

That could all change over the next 48 hours of course, as many managers do have a tendency to leave things to the very last minute.

But you suspect that while the bigger teams might have a couple of irons in the fire, and you should never rule out at least one big surprise, we aren’t going to see a dramatic last-day spending spree like we have in the past.

So why is that? Have clubs suddenly come over all financially prudent? Or are they just unusually content with the resources they have at their disposal?

Personally I think it is down to the fact that the sensible clubs are increasingly doing their business in the summer window and see the January window as little more than an opportunity for emergency shopping.

Players bought in June or July have several weeks to integrate into the squad, adapt to their new surroundings, get to know their new team-mates and learn about the style of play.

January signings, however, are pretty much dropped in at the deep end and have to hit the ground running or risk being branded an instant flop. Of course, for the more cash-rich teams, if the right player at the right price happens to become available, they will still snap him up in January, even if he might not get in the first team for months.

But for the most part, teams that have a clear vision of where they’re heading see January as little more than an opportunity to apply a band-aid to minor squad ailments.

Now I’ve said that, you can expect the market to go absolutely mental over the next 48 hours and break all sorts of spending records.

Sensible clubs are increasingly doing their business in summer and see January as little more than an opportunity for emergency shopping

Paul Pogba to Manchester United at five to midnight anyone?

A lot of nonsense

I find it quite staggering that in this day and age we still end up with football teams drawing lots at a major tournament.

But that is precisely what Mali and Guinea had to do last Thursday to see who would move on to the quarter-finals of the Africa Cup of Nations after they finished the group stage with identical records.

Guinea picked the right ball out of the bowl and, as a result, will play Ghana today. But I simply refuse to believe the African football federation couldn’t have come up with a better way of deciding the winners.

How long would it have taken to organise a penalty shoot-out between them, for example? An hour or two at most. It didn’t need to be in front of a crowd, or on live television.

But a simple shoot-out would at least have given the winning side a sense of belonging in the quarter-finals while the losers would know they were going home for football reasons, not as a result of some stupid random lottery.

Although the federation has said they will look into the rules and try and find a better solution for the future, surely they could have made an instant change with the consent of both teams. Even if it had only been a one-off solution.

I get absolutely sickened by the rigidity of football authorities when it comes to these things: that’s what it says in the rule book and we are going to need an annual general meeting, a two-thirds majority and a five-star weekend in Mauritius to change it.

Nonsense. All it would have taken is a little creative thinking, a few phone calls and, assuming they could manage to rustle one up, a football.

People in glass houses

Do you know what made me laugh about last Tuesday night’s League Cup semi-final? Listening to all the Liverpool fans bleat and moan about the antics of Diego Costa.

I entirely agree that the Spaniard plays his football on the very edge. His passionate approach means he sometimes crosses the line that separates full-blooded commitment from blatant thuggery. And yes, he stepped (and stamped) over that line once or twice in Tuesday night’s game and was, rightly, retrospectively charged over his actions.

But to hear the Liverpool fans whining about Costa on Wednesday was like listening to a group of people suffering mass amnesia.

Have they forgotten that, until a few months ago, their hero was a man who made a career out of crossing the line? Has it slipped their mind that the driving force of their team was a player whose talent was only matched by his inability to grasp the concept of common decency? Don’t they remember how they stood up for Luis Suarez when the rest of football wanted him banished?

I don’t mind a bit of healthy self-righteousness when the people involved are squeaky clean with no skeletons in their closets. But Liverpool fans spent years justifying Suarez’s unjustifiable behaviour. To turn round now and throw their teddy out of the pram over Costa’s behaviour is pure football hypocrisy.

Of course, two wrongs don’t make a right. Just as I thought Suarez was wrong for not being able to distinguish between right and wrong, so Costa is wrong for approaching certain football games like a street fighter.

But seeing as I never stood up for the racist, player-biting, diving cheat that was Suarez, I’m allowed to make that judgement.

Liverpool fans, meanwhile, may want to think twice before getting all holy on us.

No ban for banner idiots

The Standard Liege supporters who created the giant banner depicting the severed head of Anderlech midfielder Steven Defour were bang out of order.

Defour left Standard Liege three years ago for Porto, which was fine. But this summer he moved back to Belgium to play for Anderlech, Standard’s bitter rivals.

I can understand the fans’ anger at the move – you never want to see a player you hero-worshipped turning out for a team you hate.

But Defour didn’t leave one club directly for the other – there was a three-year gap in between. Under normal circumstances, you would expect that to serve as an emotional buffer. Not for the Standard ultras apparently.

Having said all that, I don’t agree with those saying the people who created the banner should be banned from football grounds.

Depicting a beheading is obviously morally questionable, doubly so at a time when ISIS is making regular headlines for doing that very thing.

But unless someone laid down clear rules that that couldn’t be done, how can you then impose a ban on supporters afterwards? The people behind the banner insist it was a reference to horror movie Friday the 13th, and not terrorism. And how can anyone prove that isn’t the case?

Of course, I don’t want to see this type of banner at football matches. Most decent people don’t. But there is an easy way to control the imagery on these things – check them before they are unfurled.

Admittedly, you can’t exactly drag it into the stadium manager’s office and unroll it for pre-kick-off approval.

But a banner of that size must take a while to create, so putting some sort of permit system in place, where a club official gets to check the banner before it gets to the stadium, shouldn’t be entirely impossible.

The people who painted the banner are idiots who allowed football fanaticism to cloud their judgement as decent human beings.

But the club is equally to blame for giving those people the opportunity to display their stupid message so prominently …

sportscolumnist@timesofmalta.com
Twitter: @maltablade