article: I'm scared because there is also a clock counting down in the bottom right-hand corner so something important must be about to happen like the arrival of the four horsemen of the Apocalypse but it turns out Shaun Batt has joined Leyton Orient from Millwall instead. On loan. Welcome to Transfer Deadline Day, which I've deliberately written in capitals because there are those who think we should make it a public holiday. Chaotic and stressful and full of panic buying, Transfer Deadline Day and the window that precedes it make up football's equivalent of the Yuletide season, with Sky Sports' Jim White playing its equivalent of Santa. "Sorry, no joy with Fabregas, I brought you Fellaini instead." A magnificent irony of transfer windows is that they were introduced in 2002-03 in part to stabilise the game. It's about ducking and diving, maybe finding a player whose mother-in-law lives in Taunton, 10 miles down the road from Yeovil. Which isn't on most sat-navs Transfer windows were part of a compromise deal between football authorities and the European Commission, with the sport insisting on contractual stability for players, and clubs investing in those players, in exchange for freedom of movement at prescribed times of the year. Yet there is nothing stable about transfer windows and the media coverage that attends them. Indeed, Transfer Deadline Days in Britain, which generate mind-boggling numbers for a wide range of media outlets, have come to resemble the NFL draft in the United States. But here is another irony. The NFL draft is by some measures the second biggest sports story in the United States in any given year because it is the principal means of player acquisition and a genuine game-changer. With the weakest team getting first pick, it democratises the league, theoretically giving every team an equal chance on any given Sunday. In contrast, Transfer Deadline Days involve an awful lot of acquisitions across an unlevel playing field that often change nothing, but still generate enough hot air to make it seem as if they might. "It's a period of time that is false and everything during that period of time is forced," says Gary Johnson, manager of Championship side Yeovil. "Everybody has a little panic for the simple reason that the supporters demand a big name, or at least hope for one, and some of this is driven by the media. But for smaller clubs it's very difficult to get someone in that people can gasp at." It is difficult to find a manager who is a fan of transfer windows, whether they manage in the Premier League or the lower reaches of the Football League. Ian Holloway, who managed Blackpool and, briefly, Crystal Palace in the Premier League, reckons transfer windows are "utter madness" and lead to "the headlong hurtling into deals to rescue dreams". "They encourage knee-jerk reactions, inflated transfer fees and wages and minimal planning and background checks," adds Holloway, who parted company with Palace in October and is now at Millwall. Johnson, whose side sit second from bottom in the Championship table,
summary: There is a man on my telly standing outside The Den in a suit speaking fast and portentously without full stops or commas and with lots of superlatives.