Flatline Deadline

For many football fans, yesterday was the day that those who weren’t at work sat perched on the edge of their sofa, curtains drawn, staring at a Sky Sports News lovely and the average bloke sat next to her, whilst those at work kept a crafty eye on proceedings through a constantly minimizing Internet Explorer window.

Yes, yesterday was transfer deadline day! With millions of fans - watery eyes, heart palpitations and all - were glued to whatever screens were in front of them in the hope of their club pulling off a major signing before the transfer window slammed shut on the fingers of cash-splash happy managers (or, if you’re a Portsmouth fan, in silent prayer that the other half of your squad isn’t sold).

However it was all a bit of an anti-climax. While rumours; from the sensational (Ribery to Liverpool) to the reasonable (David James to Spurs) to the downright ridiculous (Voronin to Arsenal) were in abundance, Leeds’ Jermaine Beckford was spotted at the training grounds of the remaining 91 clubs in the football league (presumably by a best friend’s mam’s uncle’s partner’s dog’s son’s brother’s owner) and Notts County were supposedly throwing cash at retired football luminaries such as; Figo, Nedved and probably Pele, Beckenbauer and Bobby Moore, nothing of any note actually happened.

As much as Sky tried to make the transfer of Danny Collins seem important, everything was, well, a bit rubbish. They darted from club to club speaking to their roving reporters only to be told: ‘There’s sod all happening’ - albeit in a more articulate way - while a smarmy looking bloke sat on a telephone in the studio telling them why sod all was happening before feeding us false hope by saying: ‘but it could… will it… probably not… but there is a chance.’ Did it? No.

What did happen was; Pompey managed to replace the half of the squad they had sold… before quickly selling the other half and Man City signed no-one, presumably because Hughes’ arms are knackered after hurling huge sacks of dosh at clubs, players and probably passers buy in the street all summer.

So, all in all, another wasted afternoon sat in the company Sky Sports or BBC’s text commentary on their website. No change there then. Will we learn in time for January’s deadline? Probably not and with good reason: I’ve heard from a reliable source that Frank Lampard will be signing for Stockport.