Transfer Window Madness

Tomorrow at 11pm in England, the transfer window will be firmly shut, and all the madness that goes with it will come to an end. This begs the question of course, why doesn't the transfer window close before the season starts?

Managers who have been finalising their squads for the first match of the new season, could suddenly find that the day before the window shuts that a key player has moved to pastures new and left a gaping hole in the team. Surely then, it would make more sense to open the transfer window the following week after the end of the season, to run through until the Friday before the first weekend of the season, so your manager knows what he's got before the season starts. The structure of the window needs to be looked at and changed to be less of an inconvenience.

On the flipside though, watching those last few hours on the box is great TV, unless you're a fan of one of the clubs who is desperately trying to sign reinforcements, and the deals are falling through. Sky's coverage of the final day of the window is obsessive, and their wide deployment of reporters ensures that news breaks as it's happening.

Let's have an end to the madness and put some common sense into the structure, or is that a little too much to ask?