A HtO guide to: Being a transfer news guru

We all know summer is traditionally transfer silly season. It seems tradition that papers spread and, on occasions, dream up the latest, almost instantly tedious, transfer saga. But these shenanigans are no-longer restricted to the news room and journalists.

You just have to open up Twitter to see plethora of possibly, genuinely, deluded bores churning out a deluge of transfer 'news' at a rate of knots.

It's so easy, anyone can play!

Yes! You, too, can make up a vast platter of transfer bollocks news to serve up. It's easy.

Here's Half Time Oranges' handy 10 step guide to being a Transfer Watcher And Teller:

1. Pick a club, any club.
2. Pick a player said club has been linked with at any time over the past 18 months or a young 'unknown' who turns out to be amazing in the latest Football Manager game.
3. Pick a number, normally between seven and 30.
4. Add a '£' before the number and a 'm' after it.
5. Say a 'source' has told you that the club has bid said amount for said player (remember, you can't name sources - which is just as well, considering yours is about as real as Lolo Ferrari's ghost's tits).
6. Say you're pretty sure it's going to happen but can't confirm it until the club do (you know, because you don't want to get sued or anything).
7. Avoid awkward questions by saying your gran's dead and that you have to go offline for a bit.
8. Questions persisting? 'Kill off' your parents/siblings/pets. Hey, that's what they're there for!
9. Dispatch of as many family members as necessary until no one dares question your credibility for fear of upsetting a soul so brave that, despite their entire family being wiped from the earth inside a week, can still soldier on bravely to report that they reckon Kaka will be at Chelsea next season.
10. Transfer happen? Yes? Brag smugly to your doubters. No? Say it fell through at the last minute. Ideally by a last minute price-hike.

And there you have it. Blag, entertain and annoy like a true pro.

Pre-season - the unavoidable no-man's land

The football season has ended and, with no World Cup or European Championship, a football-free summer is ahead. A full summer without football. For some, non-fans, this is pure bliss. For others, it is a short-cut to insanity.

At first it seems a nice, relaxing little break. The play-offs wean you off the spherical goodness nice and slowly, then the next couple of weekends are quite pleasant. There's no biting of nails; no constantly refreshing web pages or Twitter feeds. There's no pacing up and down your front room, wearing a hole in your carpet. In short, there's no worrying. It's nice.

But then you worry that you're not worrying. Why aren't we worrying? It feels strange, almost alien, not to be wrenching your gut nearly every afternoon or evening over some game of football or other. Your brain, so used to working out, updating and hypothesising over ever-changing implications and permutations of results and formations, starts to feel under-used.

Yes, there's  the Under-21 European Championship, to stop us all from going totally cold turkey before the pre-season friendlies kick in, but it isn't the same.

Saturdays become desolate places without the company of Jeff and company or, at the worst, Gabby Logan and Garth Crooks (well, maybe being without Crooks is preferable, but you get the point).

While we mark off the days to the first friendly, we do our best to tide ourselves over. There's FIFA, Pro Evolution and Football Manager to give us our fix. Hell, some of us even go out and play football. Actually play it. With a proper ball. On grass and everything.

However, until 3pm on a Saturday in August and our over-optimism sets us up for a gauntlet of worry and the inevitable yet crushing disappointment, we will be longing for the real thing. The proper football. The best distraction from the reality that there is other stuff - actually properly important and often frightening stuff - happening in the world.

Put simply, a world without football is boring and scary. Roll on August.