“It’s not the despair; I can take the despair. It’s the hope I can’t stand.”
A phrase created and delivered by the great John Cleese in the 1986 film Clockwise, but one that can be attributed to every football supporter up and down the country right now as we near the end of the summer transfer window.
Creating a new team, a new formation and a new style of play during a transfer window has become as addictive as trying to shoehorn Erling Haaland into your fantasy football team, and still having enough
money left to buy defenders and midfielders from anywhere other than Hull City or Ipswich Town.
The thing is with the transfer window, it provides hope, but it also provides delusion!
Social media experts have returned to explaining why a 30-second clip of a new signing successfully completing a five-yard pass means we’re getting promoted, and those ‘in the know’ feed us endless stories of transfers that are “very close” but never actually materialise.
As Reading supporters, we’ve endured so much over the last few years that normal football problems feel strangely comforting. For a long time, our conversations revolved around transfer embargoes, ownership uncertainty, points deductions and wondering whether the club could survive long enough to fulfil next Saturday’s fixture.
Compared to that, the transfer rumour mill (particularly amusing on Twitter/X) debating formations, and arguing over who should start up front when Jack Marriott is inevitably injured, seems wonderfully normal.
Of course, being a football supporter means never being completely happy with what you have, what you have sold, and not managing to secure the signature of certain players who would have made a real difference to the squad, had they not signed for another club, who are of course always inferior to your own team.
I’ve spoken to fans who believe we’re one signing away from promotion, some who believe we’re three signings away from promotion, and one bloke in the pub who’s convinced we’re winning the league by Christmas and should already be looking at Championship away games next season. He’s normally three pints ahead of everyone else though, so I remain sceptical.
Looking at the squad, I genuinely believe we have the talent to challenge in this league. Unfortunately, we just do not have enough of them to see out a 46-game season and we’re so reliant on the same individuals week after week.
Every Reading fan knows by now exactly how transfer windows work. The club announces that recruitment is ongoing, the manager says they’re working hard behind the scenes but it’s frustrating, and the list of targets becomes smaller and smaller as we approach the end of the window.
The social media transfer window
Then we have the social media transfer window, which is somewhat different to the actual transfer window, as this one is provided by bots, made-up accounts using an ‘in the know’ alias, and supporters of rival clubs on the wind-up.
The social media transfer window consists of unconfirmed rumours, making it up on the spot, and wild stories about players who didn’t even know Reading had a football team, let alone want to sign for us. Someone spots a striker buying a meal deal in Reading services, social media explodes, and thousands of supporters suddenly become amateur detectives.
Those happy to ignite the rumour suddenly declare they have mates who used to go to school with the player in question (which is funny because they have never mentioned it before), and all of this while the player signs for another club and everyone starts again. It’s one of football’s oldest traditions.
The thing is, I’ve been guilty of it myself. You see or hear a rumour that makes perfect sense and convince yourself it must be true. I then send a message in our WhatsApp group, which normally starts with “did you see that we are signing xxx?”, only to then not message anyone in the group for a few days when nothing happens.
The privacy of a friends WhatsApp group seems a safe enough place to carry a rumour, although I draw the line at posting such rumours on other social media platforms, as I am more than capable of making myself look stupid in a friends group without the need for ridicule on a wider scale.
For approximately 10 months of the year, supporters judge players based on what they do on a football pitch. During the transfer window, however, all common sense is abandoned in favour of rumours, speculation and a level of optimism usually reserved for lottery winners.
Every summer and January, football supporters up and down the country convince themselves that the answer to all their club’s problems is just one signing away.
Need goals? Sign a striker.
Need creativity? Sign a midfielder.
Need pace? Sign a winger.
Need all three? Sign a player nobody has heard of from a league nobody watches and immediately announce that he’s “different gravy and we have been chasing him for months”. Hope is what fuels football and nowhere is hope stronger than in the transfer market.
The transfer window also has an amazing ability to improve players who have never kicked a ball for your club. The less people know about them, the better they become.
A striker from the Swedish second division suddenly becomes a guaranteed 20-goal-a-season machine, a central defender from Holland is described as “the next Virgil van Dijk”, and a teenager with seven senior appearances is labelled “the next Jude Bellingham”.
Meanwhile, your current players somehow become worse every single day a transfer window remains open. Last season’s player of the year is no longer good enough, your central defenders have lost yards of pace between May and July, and your captain has apparently lost all ability overnight, It’s a fascinating annual ritual.
The truth is that every supporter enters a transfer window hoping for the same thing: ambition. Nobody realistically expects their club to sign Harry Kane; what they want is evidence that the club is trying to improve.
Fans understand financial limitations, they understand budgets and they understand sustainability – what drives supporters mad is inactivity.
There is nothing more frustrating than watching rival clubs unveil signings while your own club releases a statement explaining that recruitment remains ongoing and opportunities are being explored. By the fourth week of hearing that phrase, supporters are ready to explore other opportunities themselves.
Ambition and sustainability
The challenge for Reading moving forward is balancing ambition in the transfer market with sustainability. Most supporters understand why we’re not splashing money around. We’ve already seen where reckless spending can lead, and nobody wants to revisit those dark days.
Only last week I asked the question about when we stop being grateful to the owners for saving the club and start questioning their ambition to take it forward. I still think that question is valid, and I guess the next few days will probably provide insight into that. What supporters want from the owners is sensible management off the pitch and ambition on it.
The one thing we do know about League One is that the division already feels as unpredictable as ever. Half the clubs believe promotion is inevitable, the other half think they’re too big to be in the division, and at least one chairman will decide that drawing three consecutive matches is sufficient justification for sacking the manager before October.
For Reading supporters, the transfer window carries perhaps even more significance than most. After years of financial difficulties, embargoes and uncertainty, every signing feels like a statement about where the club is heading, evidence that lessons have been learned, and reasons to believe the future will be better than the recent past.
And that’s what makes transfer windows so addictive: they sell possibility. Every signing represents a future that hasn’t happened yet and every rumour offers hope that you have found the missing piece of the jigsaw.
Because if there’s one thing football fans love more than watching their team, it’s imagining how good they’ll be once the next signing arrives, so let’s just hope that ours arrives soon!
Due to the wonders of the fixture scheduling computer and Reading Festival, this weekend provides an opportunity to sit and watch my football accumulators disappear one by one, rather than checking results on the bus or train after the game.
As a result of said scheduling, we now entertain Mansfield Town on Wednesday evening, when I fully expect us to pick up our first three points of the season.
Will it be beautiful football? Probably not. Will there be misplaced passes, overhit crosses and at least one moment when an attempt to play out from the back causes an entire stadium to collectively stop breathing? Almost certainly, but that’s League One football.
Reading 3-1 Mansfield Town
(Wing, Lisbie, O’Connor / Akins)
Attendance: 10,442
Until next week.
Much love and c’mon URZZZ!
Dixey
