5. The Failure To Meet Expectations
From the moment Sky Sports News' coverage starts in the early hours of the morning, everything will be set up to celebrate the pomp and circumstance of Transfer Deadline Day. It will be rammed down our all-too-willing throats as if it is a genuinely important date on the calendar, and not a trumped up celebration of everything that is wrong with the game (more of which later.) And unfortunately for fans of drama, the coverage will inevitably write cheques that the actual events of the day will be able to cash. Every single Transfer Deadline Day is touched more with disappointment and unrealised expectations than it is excitement, no matter how much Jim White shouts. We're sold the idea of Messi and Ronaldo swapping clubs or coming to the Premier League, and instead we get Peter Crouch swapping clubs or Michael Owen talking about how he could still do a job at a Champions League club. In other words Transfer Deadline Day is little more than Fantasy Football, and the reality is far from as exciting as we all set up to expect.