Transfer Window: Is It Good for World Football and Is It the Fairest System?

Twice a season, the transfer window opens, leading to both exciting and nervous times for fans and managers alike.

Players move between clubs, often for huge amounts of money, and there is a huge amount of speculation, which I myself have willingly been involved with. But is the transfer window, in its current format, good for football?

Can the millions and millions of pounds worth of money spent on footballers be a sensible way for clubs to run their business, and is it a fair system for players?

The January and Summer transfer windows have seen some huge deals go down. If you take the most recent transfer window as an example, figures from goal.com state that £485 million was spent by top-flight clubs during the transfer window, £100 million of that in a single day, deadline day, alone. 

How can smaller clubs expect to hold on to their best players when a bigger club comes to call? Quite simply, they cannot.

One of the biggest stories of this transfer window was the question of Luka Modric's future. It took all of Harry Redknapp's willpower, extensive backing from the board, and the guts to turn down an offer of £40 million, according to the AFP, and Tottenham are hardly a small club with financial struggles.

If Modric had been at a smaller Premier League club, he would definitely be a Chelsea player at this moment in time. It took Arsenal a single day to prise Mikel Arteta away from Everton, despite Arteta having spent a great deal of his career at the club and it providing him with a great deal of success.

Now, the sums involved are often ridiculous when it comes to transfers. In a sense, this is not a problem as the value of players have simply been inflated.

Assuming that all values are inflated, there should not be a problem as the same deals as would otherwise occur still happen and no club has more buying power than they otherwise would. 

However, the problem occurs when these deals begin to harm the integrity of a club's finances. This can hurt clubs from the biggest in the world, such as Inter, with their £509 million loss from 2006-9, as reported by goal.com, through clubs such as Portsmouth, an established Premier League side who just buckled under the weight of the funds required to succeed, right down to clubs like Plymouth who have been in an intense legal fight to secure their future.

Even Manchester United, one of the world's most successful clubs in the world recently decided to undertake a partial flotation in an attempt, according to the Financial Times, to raise up to $1 billion. More recently the club reported, according to SKY News, profits of £30 million, a positive sign.

Nonetheless, the same SKY News report stated that United's debt still comes in at over £300 million, hardly a perfect situation to be in. The new financial laws that are coming into play are designed to sort this out by restricting club's losses which will, hopefully, force clubs to improve their financial base.

It remains to be seen whether this will actually work; it certainly should for big clubs. Whether it will for smaller teams is less certain. Arsenal recently splashed out a cool £15 million on Alex Oxlaide-Chamberlain, while he was still 17.

Financial fair play would have made this deal highly unlikely and cut off a revenue stream to smaller clubs that is, in some cases, vital to their survival.

While it is, in a way, sad that teams can't hold on to their young players, it does enable them to recruit several players of a good ability for their division and would only be delaying the inevitable as ambition comes in to play.

So, there is no real problem with big clubs coming in for smaller club's players, but the price does matter as the sale of a single talented player can help a side that does not have the required financial basis reach too high a footballing level.

As a result, they cannot sustain the wages and the higher costs that football at a higher level entails. This can lead to severe financial problems but can also save a club from oblivion.

Would it, therefore, be better for players to not be able to transfer until their contract expires, except on loan?

There would then be no transfer fees, and clubs would be able to better prepare for the departure of players as they would no longer be subject to surprise moves or have to conduct a sell-to-buy policy.

Wage caps could also be imposed, something which would mean that wage inflation could be given a ceiling and clubs would not lose out due to having a smaller buying power.

Instead, player preference would come down to purely footballing concerns. Then, for example, we would know whether Samir Nasri moved to Manchester City for money or the greater chance of success.

If you take a player who is on a wage of £100,000 per week, hardly unheard of for a top player, then over the course of a single year they will make £5.2 million. That is, in reality, the cost of a decent back-up player for a top-level club.

Wages can be as much as a problem as transfer fees. Although, as reported by the Daily Mirror, Wesley Sneijder denies the rumours that he demanded £250,000 a week to move to Manchester United, and thus scuppered the move, the point still stands. Players can hold clubs to ransom.

Take Sneijder's rumoured wage demands and apply them to a five-year contract. You get £65 million. While this is on a virtually unmatched scale, it is not unusual for a club to end up effectively paying for a player a couple of times over as they are forced to outbid others.

These footballers are not going to go begging if they are forced to earn no more than £50,000 a week. In fact, they would still be incredibly wealthy, even more so at a time when much of Europe is experiencing a financial crisis that has threatened to sink whole countries.

So, player wages and transfer fees are a huge problem for clubs at all levels of the game, and the sole reason that financial fair play is being introduced.

Quite clearly, with football's ever-growing popularity, it was inevitable that money was going to become an issue, but will the new rules help smaller clubs?

Quite simply, no, it will not. Clubs like Manchester United, Liverpool and even Arsenal can afford to spend big money as they have a strong historical fan base and an infrastructure that allows them to generate a huge amount of revenue.

Clubs like Manchester City and Chelsea, and to a lesser extent Tottenham, have been able to break into the big time by doing what teams like Manchester United did over a long period of time very quickly. They acquired a strong squad.

Chelsea now have a reputation and a more solid financial basis which means that huge overhauls of players are no longer required. Instead, they can replace slowly, spending within their means.

Financial fair play is likely to reinforce the Status Quo. The days of "The Big Four" are over because Tottenham and Man City were able to spend money.

Now that will not happen again and the top teams will need to spend less and still be able to out-compete smaller teams. I have no solution to the problem, but it simply does not seem fair.

I have given this a fairly English orientated perspective, but it is by no means exclusively a problem for English clubs.

Take the Spanish league. Two teams, Barcelona and Real Madrid, receive the vast majority of television rights money which, to quote Matt Slater from his BBC blog, is making Spanish football "Scottish football with better weather, better players and tax breaks."

This means they are able to dominate the transfer window, a situation which will only develop further with financial fair play.

Moving away from money, is the transfer window fair to footballers? That is, for me, an easier question. It is more than fair for them. Transfer fees are paid because a player has time left on their contract.

Furthermore, given that players, quite rightly, must agree personal terms with their new club, they do not have to make a move they do not want to.

The players get the best of both worlds; they can force a move but can rarely be forced to move. They can, usually, get out of a contract they have agreed to.

The transfer window system works in the current format, in the sense that having two transfer windows each year is the best system.

It is certainly better than having a window open all year, which would cause carnage with players been signed at every injury crisis, small teams bleeding even more players, and a whole load of money wasted on players who have a few good games but do not make the grade over a sustained period of time.

Having two windows is better than just having one each summer as it does allow teams to deal with injury problems or sort out a squad that simply is not good enough. This can make the end of the season more exciting, in all areas of the table.

Like an upgrade to an F1 car, a few new players can make the competition that much tighter, at both the front and back of the pack.

Perhaps an IPL (Indian Premier League) style draft where all players are signed to the same length contract and there is an auction for their services every few years could work, but it seems unlikely.

The whole footballing world, pretty much, would have to agree to the system or have it imposed upon it, something that is unlikely to happen.

Furthermore, players would end up playing in places they would rather not, something that could well lead to substandard performances, rendering the system worthless.

The transfer window is, in all likelihood, the best system for World Football. The speculation cannot be good for morale and the like, but it is better than just about any other system I can think of.

It is certainly a good system for players, who usually end up getting their way, even if it takes a while, for evidence, look no further than Cesc Fabregas.

It simply is not a good system if you are a smaller club than those interested in your player, as you will eventually lose. The money involved can just kill clubs, but there is little that can be done.

Financial Fair Play will certainly not help smaller clubs keep players and it will, if anything, inhibit their growth.

So, the transfer window is the best system available, but it is far from perfect. It probably is not good for World Football, but it does less damage than any other system I can think of or have seen suggested.