Bill Borrows Column: My three-point plan to improve transfer deadline day

It’s a disgrace’, apparently. Obscene’. ‘It needs to be stopped’.

What could it be? Civil war in Syria? Famine in Africa? Nope: ‘Deadline Day’.

You’ll be distressed to learn that ex-players from clubs who have missed out on key transfers, and current chairmen who have paid over the odds, don’t like it when the summer transfer window closes a couple of weeks into the season.

Tough.

It is one of the best days of the year, the crack cocaine of the football calendar, and for every Lou Macari crying because Manchester United failed to buy anybody half-decent, there are 60,000 Arsenal fans beside themselves after securing the services of Mesut Ozil at the last minute – ‘O-Zil to the Arsenal’ indeed. And, as we are constantly told, it is all about the fans.

Some of the Tottenham faithful might be distraught to see Gareth Bale leave, but just as many are delighted to see 70 per cent of their 2012 revenue spent on playing staff rather than parked away for a rainy day.

Newcastle fans might be fuming that the club has missed a chance to strengthen, but they must look at those who run their club.

Deadline day holds the men who make decisions to account. Don’t like it? Do your business earlier.It’s fair and it applies to all clubs equally – and how often can you say that about football?

No doubt Michel Platini is currently in a UEFA laboratory somewhere in France attempting to engineer a method for the richest clubs to have an extra month to conduct their business (plus another fortnight for non-English clubs) – but, as it stands, it works. It could, however, be even better. In the interests of the fans, I have three key changes to make:

1) Deadline day is to be made a Bank Holiday, with people who don’t like football working unpaid extra hours to compensate for the absence of their colleagues.

2) A public vote to decide which club has had the worst transfer window – and the chief executive, manager, financial director and board of directors of said club to be forced to clean the cars of all their season-ticket holders for the duration of the season.

3) With 60 minutes to go, there will be a ritzy cup draw in Monaco, or a raffle at a local working men’s club in the home city of the champions. The Premier League will provide the only prize: £100m that must be spent in the next hour in the style of Brewster’s Millions.

All those in favour say ‘aye’. Woah! Not all at once.