In the 1970s, BBC2 used to provide information programmes in conjunction with the Open University which were broadcast in the early hours of a Sunday morning at a time when, let’s face it, most students were likely only crawling into their beds rather than out of them. To this infant’s eyes and ears this was a cornucopia of beige.
Four Oxbridge intellectuals would sit around a coffee table, often sporting a combination of turtle neck sweaters and wispy beards or shirts with flared collars and impossibly bushy sideburns – sometimes the very erudite would be equipped with all four. These sages would postulate over philosophical questions using words such as solipsistic and Leviathan, invoking names such as Socrates and Aristotle. To this confused youngster it was incomprehensible gobbledygook which is the expression that now comes to mind anytime The Fixture finds himself watching The Transfer Show on Sky Sports. And let’s not forget its siblings Good Morning Transfers and Transfer Talk (I think we’re spotting a theme here) which I assume, if I’d ever bothered to watch them, would simply be a rehash of everything that already appears on The Transfer Show. It generates a fair degree of navel gazing I can tell you.
The recurring question “what the hell is this” springs to mind as a perfectly manicured quartet (usually three men and a woman) ruminate over the day’s transfer speculation as if they are discussing quantum physics. Yesterday, The Transfer Show went global, dipping into the collective minds of ‘transfer experts’ from Italy, the UK and Germany. The German had clearly taken his sartorial lead from Patrick McGoohan’s character in The Prisoner as he sat on a swivel chair bedecked in a grey leather bomber jacket and matching knitted polo neck. The ‘experts’ had news about deals that may or may not happen – for that’s usually how this schtick works. There was a good, old-fashioned hijacking as Arnaut Danjuma did all the newly-signed-football-media things at Everton before taking one look at the Premier League table and deciding he was off to Spurs instead – is there a crime more heinous in the esoteric world of football transfers as “doing all the club media and the socials” before buggering off elsewhere? Meanwhile, we had Todd Cantwell playing a game of ‘yes-no’ with himself as he was interviewed inside the Ibrox trophy room during his unveiling by Rangers. And there was talk of ‘late swoops’ by Newcastle and Arsenal for Anthony Gordon and Amadou Onana.
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