Liverpool and Forest fans’ transfer anger proves football is truly broken

Was this the transfer window that finally broke people’s brains?
The only slight doubt we have is that it had already happened, several years ago. But this one felt particularly unhinged.
In some cases, frustrations were pretty easily understood. Arsenal fans being a bit grumpy about not signing a new striker is if anything a welcome sign of sensibleness; better that than dark refereeing conspiracies or proving Erling Haaland right.
But even then, Arsenal fans are in need of a bigger-picture view in which Everything Is Quite Good, Really. Easier to accept fully fledged doom and gloom from, say, Man United fans, isn’t it? They are startlingly sh*t, and have somehow managed to end the window with a weaker squad than they started it.
This is sub-optimal, and it is fine to be vexed by this.
MORE TRANSFER COVERAGE FROM F365
👉 January transfer window winners: Rashford, Nottingham Forest, Spurs, Manchester City and more
👉 January transfer window losers: Manchester United, Leicester, Newcastle, Arsenal, Liverpool fans
There are two clubs with grumpy fans, though, where we genuinely start to wonder if being a football supporter is even worth it. First and most obviously it’s #NotAllFans but it is #QuiteALotOfFans.
There are, and this is still freaking our nut out, Nottingham Forest fans who are unhappy about the state of things at the end of this window.
There was a John Percy Telegraph piece which we considered entirely uncontroversial in which he offered the overtly rational opinion that Nuno Espirito Santo will regard a window of quiet stability as a success. When you are over-achieving and flying high like Forest, the biggest concern in January is upsetting the apple cart, either by having the big bastards turn up and pick at your squad or signing players that disturb the delicate alchemy of squad cohesion that has been fostered over the last six months.
We made a similar argument in our window winners. Forest’s safest bet was to keep on keeping on.
Now you can disagree with that and think that another body here or another body there were risks worth taking. But you can’t surely think this is a disaster.
But there was one quote-tweet on that Percy piece that caught our eye. It’s just one among many, but it was our favourite.
If nffc don’t get champions league football this season
This transfer window will be talked about for the rest of time
As the sliding doors moment for the club
And how it went all spursy
Now there were a couple of things we liked about this. One, that it’s structured like a poem, which is also by far the most fun way to read it. We are also always here for Spurs just catching random strays anywhere at any time. The most important thing in all of football is still that, at all times, the joke must remain on Spurs.
But mainly we sit in bewildered awe at the ability to type the words ‘If nffc don’t get champions league football this season’ and then carrying on with the rest of that without being instantly struck down by 300 megatons of self-awareness.
It’s one opinion, and a fringe one. We get that. The most out-there voices are also often the loudest, and so forth. But truly and honestly: if you are a Nottingham Forest fan who is not currently walking around like a dog with two d*cks then we seriously wonder when if ever football is going to make you even fleetingly happy and if it is all worth it.
Which brings us to Liverpool, where ‘FSG Out’ continues to be a common cry even in the midst of a genuinely plausible quadruple tilt.
If only there were some recent evidence with Liverpool themselves that sometimes – whether by accident or design – a quiet transfer window and settled squad can actually be a good thing.
We’ve long suspected – and to be honest our traffic numbers have long shown – that vast numbers of people genuinely prefer transfers to actual football. Another group, with we suspect a significant crossover, genuinely prefer getting cross about VAR to actual football.
What do you want? Swap places with Man City or Spurs and their ruined Premier League seasons but a few new-signing dopamine hits? We’re genuinely not sure we want to hear truly honest answers to that. At least we can surely all agree nobody wants to be Man United, so there remains at least a tiny island of common ground.
Transfer coverage has become an increasingly insidious element of football, allowed to dominate coverage with its easy numbers wins and in many places a distinct lack of rigour.
And the unquestioned framing of it as ‘signing more players = good’ and ‘not signing players = bad’ has now become entirely accepted.
To spend any time at all in the company of Sky Sports News on deadline day was to have this message hammered into your brain while a clock counted down to 11pm by the hundredth of a second – an absurdly unnecessary degree of accuracy even if this were a world without deal sheets.
Transfers Good, No Transfers Bad is the overarching message of all coverage. “It’s been a good window, it’s about to get better,” someone says as Man City close on Nico Gonzalez. There is no room to discuss whether signing four expensive new first-team players in January might itself not be ideal. More transfers is more good news.
Buy the players. Buy more players now. It is more good news. No club has ever gone awry by signing too many players. Don’t try and think of any examples, there aren’t any.
MORE TRANSFER COVERAGE FROM F365
👉 January transfer window winners: Rashford, Nottingham Forest, Spurs, Manchester City and more
👉 January transfer window losers: Manchester United, Leicester, Newcastle, Arsenal, Liverpool fans