• Transfer Deadline Day

Football comes to its business senses on Dudline Day

Darren Fletcher's move to West Brom summed up a deadline day that failed to live up to the hype © West Bromwich Albion

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Darren Fletcher is a footballer of many qualities. Getting pulses racing is not among them. Yet as the transfer window prepared to creak disappointingly shut last night, it was Darren's move from Manchester United to West Bromwich Albion that was the biggest story of the evening.

Even that was more exciting than the action in the first eight hours of the day: between 6am and 2pm the most momentous confirmed news was that of Robert Huth joining Leicester City on loan.

There was only one move that involved serious amounts of money - Chelsea freshening up the section of their stable marked "high class wingers" by getting rid of Andre Schuerrle to Wolfsburg for around £22 million and bringing in Juan Cuadrado for a fee of £23m that might rise to £27m or so.

That was typical of a transfer window where most clubs seemed to behave very sensibly. Too sensibly?

Managers and chairmen have finally cottoned on that throwing money at under-researched random players, punching numbers furiously into a mobile while running through the airport, is not a recipe for success. One of the quirks of football's accession to the bazillion-pound business of today is just how amazingly bad at running businesses many of the people involved seem to be. In no other industry could you imagine people making major investments so blindly, in such a flap. That has changed.

Partly, a more sensible approach to talent identification and player recruitment has reduced the number of managers frantically rummaging through bargain bins like a man on Christmas Eve who has forgotten to get the wife a present and knows that something, anything, a 24-piece drill set, will be better than nothing.

Financial Fair Play has also clipped the wings of the biggest spenders, at least until their lawyers figure out a way to game the system properly. The new regulations mean that those bankrolled by foreign billionaires cannot just stockpile £30m players like an underemployed harem.

Lots of fans felt let down by this transfer window, but there are two conflicting desires at play. If you want a slightly fairer and more competitive league, then you have to make it a bit more difficult for the biggest teams to buy everyone in sight, and that means a less exciting transfer window.

Probably the best news yesterday, for those who want a league to be about sporting competition rather than just chequebooks, was that Harry Kane signed a long-term deal with Tottenham. That Kane, who has scored 20 goals in all competitions, plays for a side who aren't in the top four has to be a good thing. Manchester City had done their bit for the oligopoly of the obscenely rich by snaffling Wilfried Bony away from Swansea, but Charlie Austin remains a QPR player. It's better when the exciting players don't all play for the same few teams.

Maybe the January window was a let-down because there were so many major transfers in the summer. Or maybe it was just because Harry Redknapp had an off-day. Now that they don't let the zombie children huddle round the reporters shoving sex toys in their ears, and now that Sky's self-reverential yellow-ties-and-knowing-hysteria joke feels a bit old, maybe the transfer window will lose some of its manic appeal as a media event.

It definitely seems to have lost its appeal for the Radio Five man stationed outside QPR last night, interviewed on air by Mark Chapman. The guy's phone rang. "Is it Harry Redknapp? Is it Emmanuel Adebyaor?" teased Chapman. Alas no. It was agreed that it was, in fact, the bloke's wife.

Perhaps it will return with a vengeance but for now, transfer deadline day has gone flat. Who knows, people might even start to prefer watching football again.

© ESPN Sports Media Ltd