So once again the most magical day of the year for any football fan has come to pass. Well, one of the most magical days, anyway. Really it’s not all that magical when you think about it. In fact, the January transfer deadline day isn’t even the most special transfer deadline day out there. It is the summer window’s younger, less cool brother.
There were some big moves in the window, although The Badger struggles to think that any of the Premier League teams will be overwhelmingly happy with their progress. Chelsea and Liverpool seem to be the biggest winners, but when signing Daniel Sturridge is considered a “win”, you know it was a slow month.
The team that most impressed the The Badger in terms of initiative and ambition was Galatasaray. The Badger isn’t so sure that Didier Drogba and Wesley Sneijder are heading to Turkey for “footballing reasons”, as they probably claimed.
The Badger likes to think that Turkish club Bursaspor were trying to emulate their rivals by trying to sign Rio Ferdinand, only to get the wrong brother. The Badger thinks this would be a fitting metaphor for how the January transfer window feels for most clubs.
In particular, Arsenal fans must be over the moon with their club’s decision to only sign one player, which they were forced to make after Kieran “little niggle” Gibbs suffered an injury that means he will be out injured for three to six weeks.
The Gooners were loud and proud over Twitter at the start of the New Year, claiming that their side had made a £30 million bid for a mystery player. Call The Badger a cynic, but it seems more likely that a multi-millionaire footballer would give his entire wage packet to charity.
Meanwhile, in the sport of pretending to like American football, The Badger has been made aware of the fact that the Super Bowl took place over the weekend. The Badger enjoys the time-honoured tradition of eating unhealthy amounts of food in order to celebrate the fact that overweight ‘athletes’ are allowed on the field at the same time as actually athletic people. Only in America, eh?
So The Badger welcomes Super Bowl XVLIXVILSIM, as it means six month’s freedom from hearing about a glorified rip-off of rugby in safety equipment.