By Danielle Warren.

(Or ‘How I Stopped Worrying and Learned to Love Transfers’).

When you were a kid, summer was the time of year you looked forward to most. The days seemed to be long and warm and you played football instead of watching and analysing it incessantly.

As an adult, summers are typically not as much fun anymore – unless you are a teacher, you have to work through the summer months, and the stress of routine and everyday life continues unabated. [Even the weather doesn’t seem as good anymore! – Ed]

And then, most pertinently to this article, there is the time away from football.

For the players, this is time to rest and reset, usually involving a beautiful beach at an expensive resort, a relaxing and luxurious oasis away from the harsh realities of the UK weather they ply their trade in before the arduous pre-season training.

For the fans though, summer can either be a welcome retreat or a barren wasteland. After an arduous and turbulent season not unlike the one just finished for Liverpool, fans can now wake up on Saturday mornings grateful for the summer respite.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying every season is filled only with stress. The vagaries of the game and the multitudes of ups and downs are normal and shared in equal measure by all. But the collective of what happens throughout the season can be exhausting. Fans only have so much energy to keep their interest and emotional level up throughout the regular season. So summer can be greeted with a sigh of relief and a little break before the next emotional roller coaster begins in earnest, come August.

For myself, and I have a sneaking suspicion for many others, the summer is an agonising period that consists of a combination of desperation to watch weekly football and the torment of seeing the infamous transfer window play out in front of us.

Much like the summer break itself, the transfer window can also either be a generally positive experience or a cruelly negative one. For nearly three months, the fortunes of your club can swing from title-winning aspirations to acute anxiety over where the team is going to end up come September.

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