The business of football transfer and its importance for the Manchester United fans.

The usual terms associated with football transfer – transfer windows, summer transfers, transfer gossips, transfer speculations, all comes down to one thing – the start of a new (football) season. According to one columnist, transfer speculation is like sport’s soft porn. He is not wrong. Any news, regardless of the source – is news. It makes reading materials for millions of fans, no matter how ridiculous it gets.

 

For most football fans the transfer window is one of the many parts of the football season .It is the beginning of a brand new season. It is the start of a new hope (winning trophies), a new wish (new players sign to be sign), a new outcome (a better finish than before). This is where fans get down and speculates, who should comes in and who should go. Mind you the players do the same too. At the club level the management goes about their business of signing new players, extending contracts to key players, off-loading players and to many extents – persuading key players to stay. Hence the frenzies at transfer news - be it in speculations or actual deals happening. It gets the excitement going, it gets the adrenaline pumping – all for the starts of the season. It gets even more exciting when ridiculously large amount of money being bandied for certain players.

 

For Manchester United this season is unique. Unique in the sense that a new manager comes in, and in the process replace the irreplaceable. While supporters of other clubs are rather immune to changes at the managerial level, this is not the case for Manchester United and its supporters. Most of United’s fans in the 20’s and 30’s have not even heard of any other names associated with the title – Manchester United Manager. It is just the one and only Sir Alex Ferguson all along.

 

In David Moyes Manchester United’s supporters’ opinions are divided. On one part, most supporters would heed Sir AlexFerguson’s advice – to support David Moyes. This man is new to the job, a job most football manager would die for but would rather not admit to wanting it openly. A job with such enormous expectation from the supporters as well as from the club itself. The very fact that David Moyes was handpicked by Sir Alex Ferguson speaks enough of the what the new man is and will be capable of – delivering football results.

 

The other part of Manchester United supporters meanwhile have a more ‘impatient’ tone in their opinions. This could be down to the fact is that we are all living in the result-oriented societies and football is no different. Football clubs are being managed like businesses these days. Success will be judge on silverware (s) and further translates into revenue. Gone are the days of ‘romantic’ football notion, where football is pure football and nothing else matter. This group of supporters may consist of die-hard fans, casual fans, new fans, or even ‘glory hunters’. But their voices have common ground in the sense that judgments is based on what they see and read. And what they read – in terms of David Moyes performance so far – unconvincing pre season results, the Wayne Rooney saga, and mostly – players targeted and bid but none show up at Old Trafford. Most supporters would readily agree that for the past years, most of United’s transfer were done long before the window closes, with few notable exceptions (which by the way have something to do with a certain Daniel Levy).

 

Herein lies the importance of this season transfer windows in particular. In this aspect, supporters judge and will continue to judge David Moyes until 2^nd September when the transfer window shuts. Being new to Manchester United and the job is one thing, but being able to use your personality to make the difference in persuading players to join your team is another thing. David Moyes will be severely tested even before the actual season started, having to deal with the Rooney saga being his priority now. A marquee signing may not silence the doubters but it will definitely help Moyes further in easing into his new role at Manchester United.

In the end, he may just abandon the part of football transfers and make do with the title winning squad he inherited, and plays them the David Moyes way. After all he is being good operating without big funding and producing results (at Everton), comparatively to their ‘more established’ neighbor at Anfield.