Should the transfer window be shut earlier?

The Premier League table is slowly but surely taking shape, with three games having been played by all camps. We are starting to see who has got their sides figured out, who will be contending for the league title and who will be battling for relegation.

We know almost everything we would need to know for the following season, expect one thing, who will be on what team?That’s a little dramatic, but its true. As of writing, we have just had the news Isak and Guehi will be moving to Liverpool, yet to be announced and confirmed, but this changes the very nature of the season.

I often refrain from making season predictions and previews, the main reason being, we do not know what the full squad looks like until we are already underway. Had I made one this season, it would have included Eze on the Crystal Palace squad rather than the Arsenal, changing both teams fortunes.

As soon as this transfer is made, the entire table prediction is null and void. It’s no longer accurate. A logical conclusion would be to publish my season prediction just after the window closes. But that is three games into the season, so either no one cares or everyone will tell me I’m stating the obvious.

There’s no way to win.

It terms of content, this is annoying for both writers and readers. But fans now have the difficultly of nailing their colours to the wall. As a fan, do you want to buy your teams new home shirt when its released, or wait until you make that big signing your team has been linked to all summer?

Or, much worse, you have just bought your new teams kit but across the back is the name of a player, who after one game, left to go to another club. I don’t even dare to speculate the notion of buying a star player shirt, just for them to move to your biggest rival.

This is devastating when they it happens at all, but let alone when you have just spent £100 of your hard earned money for the player to leave days later.

As annoying as it is for fans, I can’t begin to imagine how frustrating it is for players and their families. Imagine, you are your family have just got settled in an area, school has just started for your kids, and life is starting to take some normality. Then bang, you are moving, potentially country, with a weeks notice, and you now have to uproot your entire life because last minute some executives decided so.

We wonder why players who have had the entire summer to settle in, build chemistry and fitness, perform better than those who are thrown in at the last minute to adapt.

Would you be able to perform in your job if you got moved company without any notice, and four days into your new company you had to perform, and justify your £X million price tag, in front of a crowd of 45,000 and the internet watching?

So, why is the transfer window still open so far into the season opening?

My only conclusion, incompetence.

If team executives could compose their squad in time, we wouldn’t need the extra long transfer window. But it is clear that team executives do not act until absolute necessity. Arsenal should have completed the signing of Eze months ago, but waited until Kai Havertz injury to do so, two games into the new season.

Arsenal have been rewarded for having the bank balance to make a deal overnight. Had this level of injury happened to a small club, they would not be able to afford a replacement.

There is no reason, professional football directors who are paid millions of pounds, can not construct their roster over the summer and need to wait until the season has begun to address the problems that any match going fan could tell you exists over a Peroni in the pub after a game.

To add salt to the wound, the transfer window doesn’t even shut for the whole season. Executives will have an entire month to rectify any mistakes in only three months time in January when the market opens again.

I don’t see who its beneficial to, other than incompetent executives and FIFA’s commission revenue, to have the transfer window open during the opening stages of the season.