The transfer window has lost its wonder - bring back the surprises

Our brains are finite spaces. There’s only so much information that we can properly absorb and comprehend before the seams start bulging and the particulars begin to spill out like polystyrene beans from an overstuffed beanbag. We are not built to retain the gaping breadth of human knowledge in our skulls and yet it is forcefed through our eyeballs and ear canals on a daily basis.

Hell, I’ve watched more videos on my phone this morning than my great-great-grandparents will have seen in their entire lifetimes. Am I better for it? Absolutely not. I have developed the attention span of a goldfish in a bowl of espresso martini, and the other day I forgot the word ‘hotel’. I had to google it. It was a low point. But hey, at least I could tell you whether or not Baby Gronk is the new drip king, or if he is in fact being rizzed up by Livvy. Sometimes I hate it here.

According to various analytics, there are around 500,000,000 tweets sent every single day. Between the months of June and August, approximately 85% of them are related to transfer rumours. Or at least it feels that way. Trying to scroll through the timeline without encountering a Romano or an Ornstein at the moment is like trying to play hopscotch through a minefield in clown shoes. You’re getting three steps at best, pal. AT BEST. And I, for one, am a bit tired of it.

Don’t get me wrong, I have immense respect for the journalistic goliaths who dominate conversations at this time of year. At their pinnacle, transfer insiders are diligent, near-mystical presences who unearth secrets like conniving advisors to the paranoid monarchs of fantastical medieval realms. I guess in this analogy, they also have a sideline as the booming town crier in the figurative market square of the Twittersphere, but you get my point.

Is it good that they know the things they proclaim to know? Probably, yes. It certainly makes for content if nothing else. There are those football fans who follow the twisting, writhing gossip of the transfer window with a similar invested devotion to the manner in which your aunt watches Emmerdale. Without actual action to discuss, speculation is the lifeblood that keeps this beautiful, grotesque sport ticking over all summer long. I’m fully aware that without the idle whisperings of the rumour mill, I’d almost certainly spend a solid three months out of the year trimming hedges or washing cars or panhandling for copper as one of those living statues on Gateshead high street.

But at the same time, I really do miss the surprises. At the risk of sounding overly misty-eyed and nostalgic, back in my day - before the advent of podcasting and klaxon emojis - the transfer window felt as if it held so much more wonder. The nearest thing we had to a David Ornstein was Teletext, and the only time you might hear the words ‘Here we go!’ in a summery context would be if two dads off the estate had a few too many Kestrel Supers at somebody’s barbecue and started squaring up over a neighbourly paddling pool-related dispute. They were simpler times.

And it also meant that when a transfer was announced out of the blue, it felt like a genuine bombshell. Now, it is all but impossible for a club to keep their new signing under wraps. Even if everybody involved in the deal swears to, and abides by, a state of absolute secrecy, all it takes if for an eagle-eyed fan to spot a rival player queuing for a Cafe Nero at a slightly alien motorway service station and the jig is up. Social media is ablaze faster than a paper oven glove. And don’t get me started on flight trackers.

How nice it would be to rekindle that old wondrous feeling again. At this stage, nobody can make things go back to how they were; the horse has well and truly bolted, and there isn’t enough elephant tranquiliser in the world to stop Fabrizio Romano from tweeting 15 times an hour.

But at the very least, we could, like, take it down a notch. Not every minute aspect of a transfer has to be pored over in forensic detail, and not every announcement has to be leaked alongside an awkwardly photoshopped image of a fresh signing in their new colours.

Let the actual club media officers do their jobs. Let the odd delightful surprise catch us all off-guard like a well-placed jab slipping through a dazed boxer’s gloves. And perhaps most importantly for my own selfish, over-encumbered brain, let me be blissfully ignorant and ignorantly blissful.