January sales

Everything must go. All stock half-price. Whatever you want better than half-price. Take me - I'm free (practically).

You couldn't miss it if you were blindfolded, spun round 15 times and then stuck on a flying carpet to a far off land of mystery (Canvey Island) - you'd crash into a screaming sale billboard within ten miles.

To make it more fun for the male of the species, the wonders that be at football HQ decided nearly four years ago to introduce it to the nation's favourite sport. With a twist.

Yep. Instead of the gentle come hither eyes of the department store with the beckoning/screeching yellow SALE posters encouraging you to splash out on yourself when you're skint after Christmas, the football marketeers in chief slapped a complete trade embargo outside of dedicated sale times.

It makes sense - if you're an anti-capitalist living in a land of level playing-fields (which haven't by some fluke been sold off).

If you look at the micro-panic buys of Christmas Eve where you buy three loaves of bread, six pints of milk, two four-packs of baked beans (just in case) and some bottled water because the shops will be closed for two days you get an idea of how life in a transfer bubble works.

Trade restrictions create panic-buying, cut-price deals and economic ruin.

The lack of cash flow strangles the lower league clubs, which have always been seen as the nursery fields of professional football. They, in turn, cannot afford to buy in fresh talent and are reduced to begging from other clubs. Christmas cheerful, it isn't.

The other school of thought is The Good Life theory. Live off the land, nurture your local talent and you can survive.

Physically survive maybe, but you cannot compete with the real world. And you'll always need to buy in oil for fuel (unless you really strike it rich - now wouldn't that be ironic?).

The high street sales and the football transfer window aren't completely worlds apart.

They both involve trying to make more money than is probably fair out of goods that are out of season; both force gambles on whether a mid-season buy will survive the mixed spring months; and both involve spending cash on something you don't really want because it's a bargain then finding it doesn't fit.

And both raise the average man's blood pressure.

Anyone for a football 'make trade fair' campaign?

Updated: 09:50 Saturday, January 07, 2006