Deadline Day

It's that day of the year again - transfer deadline day, when the summer transfer window closes and football clubs indulge in lots of frantic activity. Even better, it is the day when all that football transfer speculation in the press and on the web comes to a head. The wild stories of the past few months are replaced by tales which transcend sanity in their ludicrousness. Players defy the laws of physics by being simultaneously spotted at a dozen different football grounds to undergo medicals for transfers which are 'definitely on'. Brilliant stuff! The flights of imagination displayed by some of those making up these rumours are truly magnificent! We're now entering the final hours which, for cynical observers like me, are often the most entertaining, as fans desperate or their clubs to sign anyone start clutching at straws - you can convince them of just about anything with next to no effort.

Mind you, I'm just as sad as all those fans - I've spent a day of my summer break from work glued to the TV and internet looking for news of Spurs transfers. I've just spent the last half hour alternating between watching Sky Sports News go into overdrive as its presenters pretend to get excited and convince viewers that the fact nothing at all has just happened is earth-shattering news, and scouring the web for reassurances that Spurs are going to sign someone more exciting than Emile Heskey to replace Berbatov. Mind you, in the process of doing this, I've unearthed the fascinating fact that Heskey's middle name is Ivanhoe. Unless that's bollocks, like the rest of the stuff I read, of course. Anyway, the fact that I'm wasting so much time on the transfer deadline is probably a searing indictment of the lack of excitement in my life generally. Still, Ivanoe - that's pretty exciting though, isn't it?