Cleaning Windows

The transfer window designed to keep the rich getting richer closed this week - or slammed shut as Skysports will have you believe. It proved yet again to be a reason for football fans to fall out of love with the game, for children to throw away their Christmas presents like that styish Andy Carroll replica Toon Army shirt or the Fernando quilt or whatever. Nevertheless it will keep the Sunday Supplement team a chance to ponder the boring tale of Chelsea's three world class strikers for another 6 months.

The problem with the 'window' is that it does not just unsettle players (Charlie Adam and Blackpool may yet be the biggest losers in all this) but it unsettle fans or the paying customer if you see it that way. Demands are made on clubs to compete with each other on the perpetual unlevel playing field that is the Premier League. Forget the last performance, it now appeears to be the ability to sign a Spurs reserve on loan that is the key to success.

The winners of this window all around appear to be Liverpool or more specifically John W Henry and his NESV. They came to the club promising the fiscal repsonsibilty that had been lacking from previous American owners - they held true to their word. Liverpool sold their number one asset. They sold him at the wrong time and the top shirt seller in one of those ridiculous polls has been sent packing for £50million. Such scenario under a Tom Hicks regime would have had the protests hit breaking point. Instead NESV acted decisively.

At the start of the transfer window they brought in the bullet proof front man - Kenny Dalglish. They asked a football man what the football fans from the city he calls home would want from this nightmare scenario. And Dalglish delivered. Perception in football is more of a reality than the blades of grass on which the game is played. Liverpool simply overcame the idea that they were being bullied by one club ... by bullying two others. Sure they lost their main striker, but they took Ajax and Newcastle's crown jewels. For now that is enough.

Liverpool could never be seen to be the victim of any transfer war, they took a situation and shadowed it with a couple of battles that the were always going to win. By the close play Liverpool had two to Chelsea's one .. to Newcastle's none. A victory on the field? ... who knows. Off the pitch NESV played a blinder. Ryan Babbel and Fernando Torres have left to be replaced by the a high class striker in Luis Suarez and a potential Alan Shearer-like goalscoring bully in Carroll. That is the brochure.

Liverpool have the excitement back, a new regime at the helm a hero in charge and maybe a couple of new heroes on the pitch. As for those departed .. they won nothing anyway. All without spending the football equivalent of a penny. NESV certainly know how to make something out of a terrible nothing. As for the future ..