Ten Habits of Highly Effective Transfer Muppets

The ominous draught of the transfer window is nearly upon us and the silly season of gossip and rumour has already begun...

It's near impossible to untangle the truth from b*llocks, but that doesn't stop us all from getting swept along with the nonsense regardless. We say embrace your inner transfer muppet. Stop fighting it with logic and reason. Here are our ten rules of doing it properly...

• Believe any report from a foreign sounding media agency, even if it comes from a country unrelated to the relevant clubs or player in any way.

• Demand that an established journalist reveal the source of their story, as if that won't stop the source ever disclosing any info ever again.

• Deride any transfer news that doesn't include quotes, as if footballers/managers/agents are more prone to honesty than serving their own agendas.

• Get preemptively angry and annoyed at a player just in case a rumour about them wanting to leave or forcing a move away is true.

• Develop a strange fixation with swap deals and the use of existing players as makeweights, despite the fact such deals hardly ever happen.

• Fool yourself into thinking a player won't possibly leave for reasons such as 'winning things with us will mean so much more than winning things with them'. Because that's true.

• Become a body language expert overnight, because a player's reaction at any one time is always indicative of their happiness at a club.

• Complain that a transfer story was made up if the move doesn't happen, as if circumstances don't change and plans don't alter accordingly.

• Wonder whether the pursuit of a potential signing you don't want is that most mythical of transfer window phenomenons - the smokescreen.

• Dismiss out of hand that a player is worth the reported £23.5m asking price, and furthermore decree that a penny over £18m would be daylight robbery.