World Football: Transfers Don't Mean Everything

The break that fans have after a long, arduous season of watching their team either fulfill their aspirations or disappoint them completely (the latter being the most commonly felt emotion) probably makes them feel as if the season should continue throughout the 12 months of the year.

But, during these two months of summer, fans seem to want to see their clubs change personnel. Never have I seen a fan saying, "I think we have enough quality players in our squad. No signings are needed."

Every team has its strengths and weaknesses. Every team is expected to perform and be successful in its own way to appease the owners and the supporters.

This is what makes this season a "silly season."

Clubs become greedy. They want to sign new players. Of course, when certain players leave (due to greediness, mostly), you have to replace them. But, clubs like Real Madrid seem to want to sign players for the sake of signing them.

Really, does Real Madrid need Cristiano Ronaldo? They have a solid set of players, and they have a match winning midfield. If anything, their defense needs to be shored up and what do they want to do? They want to sign a winger. It's absolutely ludicrous.

Real Madrid, of course has a history of being profligate in the transfer market. It makes me wonder whether they have a system of accounting!

What irks me is that more and more fans seem to judge a season's potential performance by their clubs' transfer activity in the summer. If their club has signed just a couple of players, fans seem to think that they're going to lose it all "just because two signings have been made."

It's interesting to note that the Invincibles team which Arsenal had just comprised of one new comer that season, and that was Jens Lehmann. He was brought in out of compulsion rather than luxury—and that too for just one million pounds.

It just goes to show that transfers aren't the be all and end all of football.

Of course, transfers are an important activity that clubs perform twice a year but I just think that fans give it a bit too much importance.

People forget that a team, as a group, can perform wonders even if there isn't a substantial change in personnel. I'm not saying that I expect Hull City or Stoke City to finish in the top half of the table with the players who brought them to the Premier League, but I'm saying that some of the "bigger clubs" can do a lot with what they already have.

A bit of tinkering is enough, but not constant change. The likes of AC Milan and Barcelona seem to want to make changes too quickly to make their fans happy. Maybe they are right, maybe they aren't, but they don't seem to want to choose stability.

That is just reflective of how football has become today. It's a sport where immediate success means everything.

Roman Abramovich sacked Jose Mourinho after just 10 bad games. Everyone knows why he left, but the official line of reasoning seemed to suggest that Mourinho had taken them as far as he could at the time—this for a man who had won everything but the Champions League in three seasons.

This can only be described as madness.

With the money and the press doing all the talking to the owners and fans respectively, it's no surprise that they too seem to believe that change is the only option available to clubs when crisis arrives.

Whether it's the managers or the players, I feel that change is not the only option. Transfers aren't everything in football. Why, you may ask.

"No team is bigger than any individual," that's why!