For many, the August Bank Holiday weekend marks the end of the most exciting three-month period of the year. No, I’m not talking about the end of the school holidays or the English Summer (that never really began!), but the Transfer Deadline Day.
Forget the arguments by labour law lobbyists who say it is an unfair restriction on trade, TD-Day gives armchair fans, players and journalists alike another excuse to sit in front of the TV watching Sky Sports News or logging onto internet chat rooms for the latest rumour merry-go-rounds as to who is, or (far more likely) who isn’t, going somewhere.

Forget the fact that clubs have had a quarter of a year to get their business in order – just like those school kids doing their homework, all the real action happens at the last possible moment.

Who can forget the TD-Day shenanigans of 12 months ago, when Manchester City were taken over by the super-rich Abu Dhabi group and less than 24 hours later were parading Real Madrid star Robinho in front of their fans, even if he probably did think he was joining Chelsea or Manchester United?

We may not have had such names bandied about this time around, TD-Day was still, nonetheless, compelling viewing.
Sky Sports reporter Andy Blurton has been singled out for special praise by former network bosses in the past for his ‘insights,’ despite the majority of them proving unfounded. He was back in the hotseat come the 5.00pm deadline this time around but seemed less forthcoming with the big stories, possibly due to colleagues being unimpressed with his previous scaremongering.

As other reporters sweet-talked training ground security guards up and down the country for up-to-the-minute access to the comings and goings of potential signings, we sat in our chairs fully assured we would hear it all ‘as it happens.’

As always, Tottenham manager Harry Redknapp was the easy rumour-mill target. Will David Bentley be leaving Spurs in a swap deal for Martin Petrov at Manchester City? Will Alan Hutton be traded for Anton Ferdinand at the last possible moment? Will David James finally get his ticket out of Portsmouth to join up with his former boss? No, was the common answer.

Then there’s the paperwork. Thank goodness for Sky Sports to explain just how much many forms are involved in getting the transfers done before Big Ben strikes 5.00! Not that it hasn’t done so twice a day since the window opened in May, mind you. We even had a player agent (yes, they will sink that low), coming into the studio explaining how difficult it is these days to do their job, now that numbers of such folk have gone from about 10 to 430 in the Premiership alone. How my hearth doth bleed.

But, at the end of TD-Day, nothing did really happen.

Spurs got a steal with Niko Kranjcar reuniting with Harry for £2m, Stoke signed Danny Collins from Sunderland, who bought Michael Turner from Hull in return, but that was about it amongst the big clubs, who, like all good school boys, got most of their work done early in the Summer.

The biggest spenders were, of course, Manchester City, who shelled out a whopping £117m during the transfer window. Liverpool (£38.5m), Aston Villa (£33m), Sunderland (£30.5m) and Manchester United (£21m), made up to the Top 5.
More interesting was news from analysts Deloitte who said that total spending in the EPL was down £50m at £450m from 12 months ago, with spending on foreign imports noticeably down 40% – in part due to the strength of Sterling against the Euro and the rise in top-rate income tax at 50% from next April.

Take out Manchester City’s expenditure, and the rest of the Premier League actually had a net income this year, bucking recent trends when far more money has left the country for players such as Fernando Torres, Andrey Arshavin and Luka Modric.

With most of the money this season going on defenders between Premier League clubs, it seems the various boards have rediscovered the value of tightening the purse strings and building from the back.

But with Sunderland, Stoke and Birmingham among the Top 10 biggest spenders this summer (even more so than Arsenal), it shows how much harder the Credit Crunch will hit if those clubs aren’t in the Premiership come this time next year, when we’ll look forward to another TD-Day in front of the box.