The busiest week of the year for football writers comes before a ball has been kicked

The nature of the week means immediately there’s a detail from a transfer saga you’re sent that demands checking. That will itself warrant writing up… before there’s another. And another. And another

It is that very rare time in the football calendar, where nothing is played and everything is thereby equal, so everyone can enjoy that rare allowance of hope, of excitement… well, everyone except one strand of the wider football community.

Football journalists can’t really feel that hope or excitement, but not because the nature of the job has deadened them to any emotion. It’s because they don’t have the time. And it is specifically because of a change of time.

There have been many arguments against moving the English transfer deadline to the eve of the Premier League season, but the most passionate would probably be made by journalists, and about journalism itself.