Steve Evans, manager of Blue Square Premier club Crawley Town, has hit out at the football ‘transfer window’ system.
He states not only is it a ‘restraint’ of trade for players but in his opinion it is killing clubs in the lower reaches of the Football League and the Football Conference.
Evans watched on as his star striker Charlie Ademeno missed out on a transfer deadline day move by a few minutes but laid the blame firmly at the door of the football authorities.
Evans said: “Any manager will tell you the transfer window system is clearly a restraint of trade for a player and one day one of the big football stars will contest it and they will win.
“Honestly the people who made up this football rule must be the same people who came up with the current offside rule, it’s all just nonsense.
“If you work at Virgin Airlines and want to join British Airways I am sure you can go when you have served your notice period and not just at certain times of the year, it is certainly not fair as after all it is a job these players do.
“Football supporters at all levels love to read and speculate about new signings but it is all geared to these silly transfer window dates these days.
“Clubs at all levels, especially down in Coca-Cola Leagues One and Two plus the Conference Premier get killed by these transfer windows. With loan players they are never your own and they join you for reasons that are not always in your clubs best interests. They may see it as a way to get match fit or gain some experience but they go back to their parent clubs with no real consequence at the end of the loan spell to what they leave behind.
“I heard the best manager in the world, Sir Alex Ferguson, and people I know well like Sam Allardyce and David Moyes also criticise this transfer window system. People who make these rules need to listen to these top managers and take their views into consideration. Sir Alex has forgotten more about football in the last 10 minutes than some of these football administrators know in a lifetime.”
