Let’s ban transfer speculation and resist the Premier League summer frenzy | Barry Glendenning

Jul 30, 2017

Jerry Seinfeld didn’t care how a plane reached its destination and football fans should feel the same about the makeup of the teams they support

Jerry Seinfeld used to perform a stand-up routine about aeroplane travel in which he addressed that irritating habit pilots have of informing passengers exactly how they’re going to get them to their destination. It’s the utter pointlessness of it all that perplexed the comedian – the excruciating minutiae of the cruising speed and altitude the pilot plans to reach, the direction the wind is blowing, the left turn he’ll make over Pittsburgh, followed by the right over Chicago before he takes the plane down to 15,000 feet. “He’s giving you the whole route; all his moves,” Seinfeld observed. “And we’re sitting in the back going: ‘Yeah, fine – just do whatever the hell you gotta do to get us where it says on the ticket.’”

Those of us with no particular interest in the byzantine machinations of the increasingly ridiculous annual spending frenzy that is football’s summer transfer window can feel Seinfeld’s pain. We don’t care which players assorted clubs are trying to sign and how everyone involved is going about it, but are content to simply wait for the dust to settle and find out who went where. Try as we might to ignore the countless reports and rumours, often fed to favoured newsmen by players, agents, club spokesmen and assorted other hucksters with self-serving agendas, such is the ravenous public appetite for transfer “news” that resistance is increasingly futile.

Tags: Football Sport Transfer window