Sunday, 21 July 2013

Stop worrying about transfers and enjoy the summer.

In general, there's something particularly odd about spending your days arguing on the internet, normally with strangers.

But that reaches a whole new level of odd, when you're spending your days arguing about something you know nothing about, with other people who also know nothing.

The endless, pointless dissection of transfer rumours has to stop. If your only interest is football, find another one. Tweet me and I'll recommend you some books to read; alternatively, go to the pub or take up swimming. I think you get the point.

Aside from my holier than thou attitude that people shouldn't care this much about football, the point is that your arguing achieves nothing. I was at the Emirates in May to hear the MD of our football club say that the club wanted to spend money this summer, a line several of the squad have repeated since. There's two options here: one, the club are telling bare-faced lies, in which case getting upset achieves nothing because they clearly don't care about mis-leading fans. Or two, the club are trying to sign players.

If it's the second one, arguing about the club's inaction so far, when there's four weeks until the start of the season and you have no knowledge of what's gone on thus far seems utterly bizarre.

The only line I keep on hearing is that the club has a history of messing up transfers. By all accounts this is true. But that was also when they were penny-pinching. Judging by what we've heard from Arsenal, that's no longer the case. So to pretend the two situations are analogous is just ridiculous. It would be akin to us drawing Real Madrid in the Champions League and saying we have a great record against them, despite the squad having changed completely since we last played them.

But even if the club are going to do nothing and we start the season with the squad as it stands, I don't think arguing with fellow fans achieves anything. People (I included) spend enough time when the season is ongoing arguing about something they can see with their own eyes - the team on the pitch - that arguing about something when you have no idea what's happening is patently absurd.

You have three months off from football every year. It's a rare hot British summer. Enjoy it.