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A good little read - Guardian
For clubs and fans, Deadline Day is the most frenetic date in the football calendar. Tom Lamont goes behind the scenes as Arshavin arrives, Robbie returns, and Santa Cruz stays put
Presenters Jim White and Simon Thomas take calls on transfer deadline day in the Sky Sports News studio. Photograph: Katherine Rose
2 February, 10.53am
It is snowing, which seems fitting, as today is Christmas Day at Sky Sports News. A channel watched religiously in football clubs, newspaper offices, and the homes of obsessive sport fans - and disregarded as one of those fringe channels in the upper hundreds by almost everyone else - SSN assumes a special importance when the football transfer window closes twice a year. By tradition, these are days of last-minute bumper deals, unexpected gazumpings, and wild, rampant speculation, for all of which this channel becomes a funnel. And the freak snowfall has cheered the team, based in Isleworth in west London, for another reason. "It's a day of mass, industrialised truancy!" booms presenter Jim White (he always booms), patrolling the studio before his afternoon shift begins. "Everyone will be at home watching!"
12.30pm
"Stand by for the Arshavin report," says a producer in the gallery, a dark, hot box packed with dozens of monitors and staffed by people who all talk without pause. "Let's get an 'Exclusive' graphic up if we can!" Because the news that Andrei Arshavin is over in the UK, negotiating a transfer from Zenit St Petersburg to Arsenal, is an exclusive of sorts for the channel, following a bit of good fortune during the night. Sky's golf team, stationed in Dubai for the Desert Classic and in the same hotel as the Zenit team, did a bit of eavesdropping and discovered the Russia striker was in London; Sky cameras were promptly whizzed down to a Hertfordshire hotel to record Arshavin loitering outside. "The Arsenal fans got there almost as quickly as our journalists," says head of sports news Andy Cairns. "We should sign some of them up, they were there quicker than Setanta." (Setanta Sports News serves as an obvious enemy, regularly and affectionately mocked. "We've been going a lot longer," shrugs Cairns.) Back in the gallery, the director orders a switch to the Emirates Stadium, where reporter Bryan Swanson is out in the snow, waiting for news. He will be there a long time.
Taking clearer shape, in the studio-cum-newsroom that can be seen on TV over the shoulders of SSN's presenters, is a story about Liverpool striker Robbie Keane, apparently on his way to London to meet Tottenham. "Does anyone know where Spurs have their medicals?" asks a reporter in the newsroom, and everyone picks up a phone, squeezing contacts for information. "Does Holly House definitely have an MRI scanner?" - "Hi Dad, just a quick one: what's that private hospital you went to in Chigwell?..." "Hypothetically, where would you go if you were having a medical with Tottenham?"
This last one is reporter Andy Burton, talking to a mystery footballer. He has proudly shown me a list of telephone numbers on his mobile: 615 players, agents, club officials and managers, from Arsène Wenger to Zat Knight. As well as ferreting for information about Keane, he is digging into a possible deal between Inter Milan and Tottenham. This is a favour to two policemen who helped him out that morning. "They dug my car out of the snow," says Burton. "Not a word. But just as I was driving away one shouted, 'Is Jermaine Jenas staying at Spurs?'" There doesn't seem much substance to the Jenas story - Burton will later scotch it on air - but he is getting text messages about a far bigger deal: the long-rumoured, big-money move of Roque Santa Cruz from Blackburn to Manchester City. It finally seems to be happening.
And so, amid the routine comings and goings of a closing transfer window - Wigan's Henri Camara bought by Stoke City, Coventry's Michael Mifsud loaned to Barnsley, Bristol City's Dele Adebola will not move - the day's main plots take shape. Robbie to Spurs, Roque to City, Andrei to Arsenal.
2pm
Andy Burton is on set, delivering an update on the latest rumblings. His nickname is Four Phones, dreamt up by executive producer Cairns because fewer devices would not be enough for the number of calls he makes. "He is 50-odd, he doesn't get it," says Burton. "He thinks the more phones you've got the busier you are." In fact, Four Phones has one phone; the other presenters usually put theirs in front of him when he's on air, while a special overhead camera gets footage of him fiddling with the handsets.
Transfer deadline day has made Burton a cult hero. During the rest of the year, he is a travelling reporter, with a patch that covers Liverpool's Champions League games and Irish internationals. But twice a year he is transformed into the channel's transfer-talk sage, because of the unusually large number of people in the closed-mouthed world of football who will speak to him.
A running joke involves players, watching at home, calling Burton while he is on air. It happens now. "Leroy Lita thinks he's funny..." says Burton, his phone buzzing in the middle of a report. "Answer it!" shouts a producer. Seconds later, there's another call. "Tell us who it is!" shouts the producer (it's Micah Richards). There's a third call, but the gallery are tired of the joke. "Leave it," says the producer. "Keep it tight, boys."
2.30pm
Sharply suited and airbrushed an alarming shade of orange, presenter Simon Thomas is doing some final research before taking over as an anchor. His 3-7pm shift will straddle the final two hours of the window, plus its untidy aftermath as rushed deals, many disrupted by the snow, are processed by the FA. He is worried the Arshavin move, a story the team are banking on, will run out of time before the 5pm deadline.
"It continually amazes me," says Thomas, "how often clubs leave deals until the last minute." Last January, more than a third of the Premier League's deals were completed the day the window shut. Why so late? Burton believes it's contingency, with teams playing so many games in January that they need to keep their options open for as long as possible in case of injuries. Pressed, he adds money as a factor. "Leave it until the last minute and you can back someone into a corner."
Burton has to be careful not to become a part of the corner-backing, preferring to make the calls himself because "the ones that call me are the ones who want to engineer moves". Instead, most of his tips come from "a couple of good, close footballer mates who will phone me and keep me in the loop". What's in it for them? They do it as a favour, he says, "because they like what we're doing and I've built up a relationship. You might have an agent who needs to send a DVD to a club in Greece to get their player a move," says Burton. "They ask me to get them his last 10 goals on DVD. So I do it for them and say, 'You'd better pay me back on deadline day...'"
Sometimes information comes from stranger sources: cleaning ladies in airports, commuters on the Liverpool to London train. This was how the Keane story emerged. "We were told: 'He's on a train,'" says Cairns. "But it was from a good source. We've got good antennae for time-wasters." "You have to assume that everything could be true until it's proved otherwise," says Brendan Henry, one of the newsroom chiefs. "What's the harm in making one call to check it out?"
2.59pm
With two hours until the window shuts, Jim White and Simon Thomas are ready to take over on the front desk. Thomas gets a final orange top-up from the make-up assistant, while White exchanges a last bit of transfer banter with the production team ("Gary O'Neill? Cash plus player?"). Wearing jeans under his crisp, navy suit, he settles in at the desk, ready to babble non-stop about Charles N'Zogbia, Olivier Dacourt and obscure Argentinian striker Juan Carlos Menseguez for the next four hours. "Doors to manual!" bellows White. They go live.
3.50pm
The Santa Cruz deal is stuttering, and Burton can't hide his disappointment. Minutes earlier, he had sidled over to show me a piece of paper on which he had scrawled "Santa Cruz, £20m, 90% certain". But a text from a source suggests the move is now off. "None of this is bluffing, trying to look better than other channels," Burton told me earlier. "If we make a mistake, and sometimes we do make a mistake, because we're relying on trust, it's an honest mistake."
Around the studio, spirits have lowered. None of the big stories has come to the boil, and there is a fear that this will not be the epic window-closure the team wanted. "We could do with one of the big deals kicking in now," says White.
The memory of last transfer-deadline day hangs over the team, discussed with the misty reverence of soldiers recalling a battle. Last September, in a dozen hours of pure footballing madness, Man City were bought out by Arab royalty, Dimitar Berbatov engaged in a bizarre public flirtation with Manchester United, and the British transfer record was smashed when Robinho was plucked from under Chelsea's noses by newly wealthy City. "I had a call from someone who said Michael Owen was going to City," remembers Burton. "I phoned one of the players that I'm friends with at Newcastle. He phoned the assistant manager, and came back to me, saying, 'I don't think Owen's going to go... but I think Kevin Keegan has quit.' Chaos." Burton looks up wistfully. "It was the best day of my life, apart from when my son was born. Best day of my life."
Today is not so special. He has just received a text message from the press officer at Fulham, revealing the exclusive news that Elliot "Junior" Omozusi has joined on loan. "Who the fuck cares!" he giggles, before going on air to "break" the story. Minutes later he gets another message from Fulham: "Sarky bastard!"
4.20pm
Action at last, as Spurs confirm the signing of Robbie Keane. "That's what we wanted!" roars White. A director in the gallery promises, "Things will hot up now," and things do. Making a quick call on his mobile during an advert break (all the presenters do this - a skilful use of three minutes that always looks as if it will backfire), White hears whispers that Portuguese winger Ricardo Quaresma, once Tottenham-bound, will be poached by Chelsea. Revitalised by the tip, the newsroom comes to life: reporters press their contacts; someone runs forward with a text from Tottenham; Burton fiddles with his one-phone. Ten minutes after the first hint, a second source is found. Burton runs to his seat on set - "Good, good, good, good" - and goes live with the story. "We're hearing rumblings that Chelsea are in the hunt..."
4.45pm
Another advert break and another hurried call, as Jim White gets through to Blackburn chairman John Williams ("I really appreciate you telling me that, John. Can I quote you?"). He confirms that Santa Cruz's move is off. After 11 years at Sky, White has a contacts book that makes Burton's look like a scrawled-on napkin. "There aren't many people Jim doesn't have on his phone," Thomas tells me. "If it ever gets lost, we'll all be in trouble." As the 5pm deadline approaches, White's leg starts jiggling uncontrollably under the desk; he is now permanently shouting, even when speaking to colleagues feet away. "They tell us to rein it in!' he says. "But when it goes mental, I have to unleash!"
5.17pm
The window has been shut for 17 minutes, closing in rather anti-climatic fashion: the day's big deal, Arshavin's move to Arsenal, is far from complete. But a reporter has spotted a story from a news agency in France, quoting a Zenit official that the deal is off. Everybody leaps up. "Can we report this?"; "One person's saying it's on, one person's saying it's off"; "Most. Convoluted. Transfer. Ever"; "We'll have to whack a right good health warning on it"; "We can't dismiss the source just because it's French." The news editor receives a mysterious call from a member of the public - someone voices suspicions of "a Setanta mole" - while another reporter says they've heard that the legal papers are already with the FA. Brian Swanson, who is moving into his 10th hour in the snow outside the Emirates, hasn't heard anything new. "Arsenal have only had a whole fucking month to do this," moans the news editor.
Rising from his chair with a sigh, all but hoisting up his trousers by the gunbelt, Burton unplugs his phone from its charger. "I'm going to do something I didn't want to have to do," he says, stepping into the corridor - and calling up A for Arsène Wenger.
7.01pm
Whooping, back-slaps, high fives. The scene is like that in a changing room after an FA Cup victory, with perhaps a touch of the triumphant Nasa control room at the end of Apollo 13. After almost two hours of floundering following the window closure, when nobody is sure what or how much to say about the Arshavin switch, a breakthrough. Wenger, who had been ignoring Burton's calls for an hour, finally answered, and in a 40-second conversation confirmed that Arshavin would sign for Arsenal.
"I'm just glad there's been a twist," says White, his face still flushed from the final moments. "There was the usual claim and counterclaim, but it was terrific fun." He and Thomas, after four hours in the hot seats, trot off to the toilet. "We've got iron bladders," says Thomas. "And I'm wearing incontinence pants," shouts White. Burton stands in a corner, enjoying his moment. "Apparently the rest of us had been working on the Arshavin story all day..." says the news editor, slapping him on the back. An outdoor reporter calls in from the snow: "You're everywhere, you. Like chickenpox. Like syphilis."
As the night shift arrive to take over, the day team begin to make their way home in the snow. Burton decides to hang around, to see the window closure through to midnight. There won't be another transfer deadline day until Monday 31 August, and next week he'll be back outside Anfield, getting ribbed by players who will repeatedly ask how many mobiles he's carrying. "Good stuff, mate," says a departing reporter, giving Burton a final high-five. "Until the next window..."
My transfer deadline day
Sam Allardyce (Blackburn Manager)
I was at the training ground in the morning with the players. Then I let them go and went to meet the chairman, John Williams. On deadline day you have to share information with each other, so that when anything happens you are ready to make a decision. You don't want to be doing business this late, but we knew there would be offers for our players. So we sat down and decided: we'd make a stand and refuse all of them. Yes, we'd be near the phones, willing to speak, but we would resist all offers. Not only for Roque Santa Cruz, a well-publicised target, but at least three other attempted signings.
I was slightly concerned at certain times during the day, because offers come your way that seem far too big to resist - especially in Roque's case. Lots of agents speak to Sky Sports News; we generally know where the leaks come from. Agents try to do the best for their clients and they use the media to panic managers and chairmen into making speculative deals, but that wouldn't happen here. It is the last chance to sign some cover for your team; you are thinking: "Have we got enough players? Will someone get injured or get a long-term suspension?" These questions are what make people jump into the market. That's why there's so much price inflation on that day.
I left the club at around 4pm. I thought: "I'm going home, that's it." I was very relaxed. We were all glad when it was 3rd February.
Chris Brereton
Chris Nathaniel (Agent & business manager)
My day started at 7am and finished some time after midnight. I was juggling five or six clients who were potentially moving clubs and the day was extremely high-pressured. It's almost like the stock exchange; phones going off all over the place, people shouting, everyone on red alert.
If a player is disenchanted at their club and wants to move, they are just desperate on deadline day - it's their last hope of getting out of a bad situation. Some players will phone every second of the day, asking the same questions. One of my clients, Yssouf Koné, [pictured, of Romanian side CFR Cluj], was close to a move to a Premier League club, but he was very relaxed about it. We knew three or four teams were desperate for a striker, but Koné's move was subject to a lot of deals for other players. I had to skate between clubs, while monitoring other deals. In case a deal was struck, we had a lawyer on stand-by to sort the work permit, and a private jet on stand-by in Romania too. That cost around £25,000.
It was very tough trying to balance everything but we had made sure we had all our ducks in a row, prior to the deal getting struck. I'd done all the pre-sale stuff in the weeks before, telling the managers: "He's going to improve your club, he's a good lad." That's the worry for managers in the January window - they could end up taking someone who sounds right, before finding out they're not the sort of personality they want at their club.
Koné's move didn't happen. A big part of it is managing your player's expectations. You need to be honest with them, not tell them they're definitely moving when in fact a deal is a million miles from being struck. TLa
Charles N'Zobgia (Premier League player)
The deal that took me from Newcastle United to Wigan happened very quickly over the weekend. On transfer deadline day [Monday] I woke up in a hotel in Wigan, near the JJB Stadium, ready to complete the move. I was up early.
I travelled to the JJB with my agent. The medical test was first, and then the contract signing with the director happened at midday. The press were there to take pictures, but I didn't get my first "Charles N'Zogbia" Wigan shirt until the next day. Me and my agent agreed to give some of the money from the deal to charity [a children's hospital in Wigan and a cancer hospice in the north-east that is treating N'Zogbia's first Newcastle manager, Bobby Robson].
After signing I met some of the players: Titus Bramble, whom I knew from Newcastle, Antoine Sibierski, Mido. You check each other out, you talk, shake hands. I couldn't train with them that day because of the medical and signing the contract, but I knew my first session was the next morning, so I didn't do anything special for the rest of the day. I chilled at the hotel and watched some television - ITV, nothing I remember. I flicked on to Sky Sports News and saw a bit about myself, but I don't normally like to watch it. I remembered I had a DVD so I put it on - American Gangster with Denzel Washington.
I had dinner on my own at the restaurant in the hotel, just some pasta. I was in bed by nine o'clock, ready for training with my new team the next day.
I didn't have a chance to say goodbye to my friends in Newcastle that weekend because things went so quickly. But I went back a week later to pack up some stuff from my old house - I live in a place in Bolton now - and saw some of them to say goodbye.
For clubs and fans, Deadline Day is the most frenetic date in the football calendar. Tom Lamont goes behind the scenes as Arshavin arrives, Robbie returns, and Santa Cruz stays put
Presenters Jim White and Simon Thomas take calls on transfer deadline day in the Sky Sports News studio. Photograph: Katherine Rose
2 February, 10.53am
It is snowing, which seems fitting, as today is Christmas Day at Sky Sports News. A channel watched religiously in football clubs, newspaper offices, and the homes of obsessive sport fans - and disregarded as one of those fringe channels in the upper hundreds by almost everyone else - SSN assumes a special importance when the football transfer window closes twice a year. By tradition, these are days of last-minute bumper deals, unexpected gazumpings, and wild, rampant speculation, for all of which this channel becomes a funnel. And the freak snowfall has cheered the team, based in Isleworth in west London, for another reason. "It's a day of mass, industrialised truancy!" booms presenter Jim White (he always booms), patrolling the studio before his afternoon shift begins. "Everyone will be at home watching!"
12.30pm
"Stand by for the Arshavin report," says a producer in the gallery, a dark, hot box packed with dozens of monitors and staffed by people who all talk without pause. "Let's get an 'Exclusive' graphic up if we can!" Because the news that Andrei Arshavin is over in the UK, negotiating a transfer from Zenit St Petersburg to Arsenal, is an exclusive of sorts for the channel, following a bit of good fortune during the night. Sky's golf team, stationed in Dubai for the Desert Classic and in the same hotel as the Zenit team, did a bit of eavesdropping and discovered the Russia striker was in London; Sky cameras were promptly whizzed down to a Hertfordshire hotel to record Arshavin loitering outside. "The Arsenal fans got there almost as quickly as our journalists," says head of sports news Andy Cairns. "We should sign some of them up, they were there quicker than Setanta." (Setanta Sports News serves as an obvious enemy, regularly and affectionately mocked. "We've been going a lot longer," shrugs Cairns.) Back in the gallery, the director orders a switch to the Emirates Stadium, where reporter Bryan Swanson is out in the snow, waiting for news. He will be there a long time.
Taking clearer shape, in the studio-cum-newsroom that can be seen on TV over the shoulders of SSN's presenters, is a story about Liverpool striker Robbie Keane, apparently on his way to London to meet Tottenham. "Does anyone know where Spurs have their medicals?" asks a reporter in the newsroom, and everyone picks up a phone, squeezing contacts for information. "Does Holly House definitely have an MRI scanner?" - "Hi Dad, just a quick one: what's that private hospital you went to in Chigwell?..." "Hypothetically, where would you go if you were having a medical with Tottenham?"
This last one is reporter Andy Burton, talking to a mystery footballer. He has proudly shown me a list of telephone numbers on his mobile: 615 players, agents, club officials and managers, from Arsène Wenger to Zat Knight. As well as ferreting for information about Keane, he is digging into a possible deal between Inter Milan and Tottenham. This is a favour to two policemen who helped him out that morning. "They dug my car out of the snow," says Burton. "Not a word. But just as I was driving away one shouted, 'Is Jermaine Jenas staying at Spurs?'" There doesn't seem much substance to the Jenas story - Burton will later scotch it on air - but he is getting text messages about a far bigger deal: the long-rumoured, big-money move of Roque Santa Cruz from Blackburn to Manchester City. It finally seems to be happening.
And so, amid the routine comings and goings of a closing transfer window - Wigan's Henri Camara bought by Stoke City, Coventry's Michael Mifsud loaned to Barnsley, Bristol City's Dele Adebola will not move - the day's main plots take shape. Robbie to Spurs, Roque to City, Andrei to Arsenal.
2pm
Andy Burton is on set, delivering an update on the latest rumblings. His nickname is Four Phones, dreamt up by executive producer Cairns because fewer devices would not be enough for the number of calls he makes. "He is 50-odd, he doesn't get it," says Burton. "He thinks the more phones you've got the busier you are." In fact, Four Phones has one phone; the other presenters usually put theirs in front of him when he's on air, while a special overhead camera gets footage of him fiddling with the handsets.
Transfer deadline day has made Burton a cult hero. During the rest of the year, he is a travelling reporter, with a patch that covers Liverpool's Champions League games and Irish internationals. But twice a year he is transformed into the channel's transfer-talk sage, because of the unusually large number of people in the closed-mouthed world of football who will speak to him.
A running joke involves players, watching at home, calling Burton while he is on air. It happens now. "Leroy Lita thinks he's funny..." says Burton, his phone buzzing in the middle of a report. "Answer it!" shouts a producer. Seconds later, there's another call. "Tell us who it is!" shouts the producer (it's Micah Richards). There's a third call, but the gallery are tired of the joke. "Leave it," says the producer. "Keep it tight, boys."
2.30pm
Sharply suited and airbrushed an alarming shade of orange, presenter Simon Thomas is doing some final research before taking over as an anchor. His 3-7pm shift will straddle the final two hours of the window, plus its untidy aftermath as rushed deals, many disrupted by the snow, are processed by the FA. He is worried the Arshavin move, a story the team are banking on, will run out of time before the 5pm deadline.
"It continually amazes me," says Thomas, "how often clubs leave deals until the last minute." Last January, more than a third of the Premier League's deals were completed the day the window shut. Why so late? Burton believes it's contingency, with teams playing so many games in January that they need to keep their options open for as long as possible in case of injuries. Pressed, he adds money as a factor. "Leave it until the last minute and you can back someone into a corner."
Burton has to be careful not to become a part of the corner-backing, preferring to make the calls himself because "the ones that call me are the ones who want to engineer moves". Instead, most of his tips come from "a couple of good, close footballer mates who will phone me and keep me in the loop". What's in it for them? They do it as a favour, he says, "because they like what we're doing and I've built up a relationship. You might have an agent who needs to send a DVD to a club in Greece to get their player a move," says Burton. "They ask me to get them his last 10 goals on DVD. So I do it for them and say, 'You'd better pay me back on deadline day...'"
Sometimes information comes from stranger sources: cleaning ladies in airports, commuters on the Liverpool to London train. This was how the Keane story emerged. "We were told: 'He's on a train,'" says Cairns. "But it was from a good source. We've got good antennae for time-wasters." "You have to assume that everything could be true until it's proved otherwise," says Brendan Henry, one of the newsroom chiefs. "What's the harm in making one call to check it out?"
2.59pm
With two hours until the window shuts, Jim White and Simon Thomas are ready to take over on the front desk. Thomas gets a final orange top-up from the make-up assistant, while White exchanges a last bit of transfer banter with the production team ("Gary O'Neill? Cash plus player?"). Wearing jeans under his crisp, navy suit, he settles in at the desk, ready to babble non-stop about Charles N'Zogbia, Olivier Dacourt and obscure Argentinian striker Juan Carlos Menseguez for the next four hours. "Doors to manual!" bellows White. They go live.
3.50pm
The Santa Cruz deal is stuttering, and Burton can't hide his disappointment. Minutes earlier, he had sidled over to show me a piece of paper on which he had scrawled "Santa Cruz, £20m, 90% certain". But a text from a source suggests the move is now off. "None of this is bluffing, trying to look better than other channels," Burton told me earlier. "If we make a mistake, and sometimes we do make a mistake, because we're relying on trust, it's an honest mistake."
Around the studio, spirits have lowered. None of the big stories has come to the boil, and there is a fear that this will not be the epic window-closure the team wanted. "We could do with one of the big deals kicking in now," says White.
The memory of last transfer-deadline day hangs over the team, discussed with the misty reverence of soldiers recalling a battle. Last September, in a dozen hours of pure footballing madness, Man City were bought out by Arab royalty, Dimitar Berbatov engaged in a bizarre public flirtation with Manchester United, and the British transfer record was smashed when Robinho was plucked from under Chelsea's noses by newly wealthy City. "I had a call from someone who said Michael Owen was going to City," remembers Burton. "I phoned one of the players that I'm friends with at Newcastle. He phoned the assistant manager, and came back to me, saying, 'I don't think Owen's going to go... but I think Kevin Keegan has quit.' Chaos." Burton looks up wistfully. "It was the best day of my life, apart from when my son was born. Best day of my life."
Today is not so special. He has just received a text message from the press officer at Fulham, revealing the exclusive news that Elliot "Junior" Omozusi has joined on loan. "Who the fuck cares!" he giggles, before going on air to "break" the story. Minutes later he gets another message from Fulham: "Sarky bastard!"
4.20pm
Action at last, as Spurs confirm the signing of Robbie Keane. "That's what we wanted!" roars White. A director in the gallery promises, "Things will hot up now," and things do. Making a quick call on his mobile during an advert break (all the presenters do this - a skilful use of three minutes that always looks as if it will backfire), White hears whispers that Portuguese winger Ricardo Quaresma, once Tottenham-bound, will be poached by Chelsea. Revitalised by the tip, the newsroom comes to life: reporters press their contacts; someone runs forward with a text from Tottenham; Burton fiddles with his one-phone. Ten minutes after the first hint, a second source is found. Burton runs to his seat on set - "Good, good, good, good" - and goes live with the story. "We're hearing rumblings that Chelsea are in the hunt..."
4.45pm
Another advert break and another hurried call, as Jim White gets through to Blackburn chairman John Williams ("I really appreciate you telling me that, John. Can I quote you?"). He confirms that Santa Cruz's move is off. After 11 years at Sky, White has a contacts book that makes Burton's look like a scrawled-on napkin. "There aren't many people Jim doesn't have on his phone," Thomas tells me. "If it ever gets lost, we'll all be in trouble." As the 5pm deadline approaches, White's leg starts jiggling uncontrollably under the desk; he is now permanently shouting, even when speaking to colleagues feet away. "They tell us to rein it in!' he says. "But when it goes mental, I have to unleash!"
5.17pm
The window has been shut for 17 minutes, closing in rather anti-climatic fashion: the day's big deal, Arshavin's move to Arsenal, is far from complete. But a reporter has spotted a story from a news agency in France, quoting a Zenit official that the deal is off. Everybody leaps up. "Can we report this?"; "One person's saying it's on, one person's saying it's off"; "Most. Convoluted. Transfer. Ever"; "We'll have to whack a right good health warning on it"; "We can't dismiss the source just because it's French." The news editor receives a mysterious call from a member of the public - someone voices suspicions of "a Setanta mole" - while another reporter says they've heard that the legal papers are already with the FA. Brian Swanson, who is moving into his 10th hour in the snow outside the Emirates, hasn't heard anything new. "Arsenal have only had a whole fucking month to do this," moans the news editor.
Rising from his chair with a sigh, all but hoisting up his trousers by the gunbelt, Burton unplugs his phone from its charger. "I'm going to do something I didn't want to have to do," he says, stepping into the corridor - and calling up A for Arsène Wenger.
7.01pm
Whooping, back-slaps, high fives. The scene is like that in a changing room after an FA Cup victory, with perhaps a touch of the triumphant Nasa control room at the end of Apollo 13. After almost two hours of floundering following the window closure, when nobody is sure what or how much to say about the Arshavin switch, a breakthrough. Wenger, who had been ignoring Burton's calls for an hour, finally answered, and in a 40-second conversation confirmed that Arshavin would sign for Arsenal.
"I'm just glad there's been a twist," says White, his face still flushed from the final moments. "There was the usual claim and counterclaim, but it was terrific fun." He and Thomas, after four hours in the hot seats, trot off to the toilet. "We've got iron bladders," says Thomas. "And I'm wearing incontinence pants," shouts White. Burton stands in a corner, enjoying his moment. "Apparently the rest of us had been working on the Arshavin story all day..." says the news editor, slapping him on the back. An outdoor reporter calls in from the snow: "You're everywhere, you. Like chickenpox. Like syphilis."
As the night shift arrive to take over, the day team begin to make their way home in the snow. Burton decides to hang around, to see the window closure through to midnight. There won't be another transfer deadline day until Monday 31 August, and next week he'll be back outside Anfield, getting ribbed by players who will repeatedly ask how many mobiles he's carrying. "Good stuff, mate," says a departing reporter, giving Burton a final high-five. "Until the next window..."
My transfer deadline day
Sam Allardyce (Blackburn Manager)
I was at the training ground in the morning with the players. Then I let them go and went to meet the chairman, John Williams. On deadline day you have to share information with each other, so that when anything happens you are ready to make a decision. You don't want to be doing business this late, but we knew there would be offers for our players. So we sat down and decided: we'd make a stand and refuse all of them. Yes, we'd be near the phones, willing to speak, but we would resist all offers. Not only for Roque Santa Cruz, a well-publicised target, but at least three other attempted signings.
I was slightly concerned at certain times during the day, because offers come your way that seem far too big to resist - especially in Roque's case. Lots of agents speak to Sky Sports News; we generally know where the leaks come from. Agents try to do the best for their clients and they use the media to panic managers and chairmen into making speculative deals, but that wouldn't happen here. It is the last chance to sign some cover for your team; you are thinking: "Have we got enough players? Will someone get injured or get a long-term suspension?" These questions are what make people jump into the market. That's why there's so much price inflation on that day.
I left the club at around 4pm. I thought: "I'm going home, that's it." I was very relaxed. We were all glad when it was 3rd February.
Chris Brereton
Chris Nathaniel (Agent & business manager)
My day started at 7am and finished some time after midnight. I was juggling five or six clients who were potentially moving clubs and the day was extremely high-pressured. It's almost like the stock exchange; phones going off all over the place, people shouting, everyone on red alert.
If a player is disenchanted at their club and wants to move, they are just desperate on deadline day - it's their last hope of getting out of a bad situation. Some players will phone every second of the day, asking the same questions. One of my clients, Yssouf Koné, [pictured, of Romanian side CFR Cluj], was close to a move to a Premier League club, but he was very relaxed about it. We knew three or four teams were desperate for a striker, but Koné's move was subject to a lot of deals for other players. I had to skate between clubs, while monitoring other deals. In case a deal was struck, we had a lawyer on stand-by to sort the work permit, and a private jet on stand-by in Romania too. That cost around £25,000.
It was very tough trying to balance everything but we had made sure we had all our ducks in a row, prior to the deal getting struck. I'd done all the pre-sale stuff in the weeks before, telling the managers: "He's going to improve your club, he's a good lad." That's the worry for managers in the January window - they could end up taking someone who sounds right, before finding out they're not the sort of personality they want at their club.
Koné's move didn't happen. A big part of it is managing your player's expectations. You need to be honest with them, not tell them they're definitely moving when in fact a deal is a million miles from being struck. TLa
Charles N'Zobgia (Premier League player)
The deal that took me from Newcastle United to Wigan happened very quickly over the weekend. On transfer deadline day [Monday] I woke up in a hotel in Wigan, near the JJB Stadium, ready to complete the move. I was up early.
I travelled to the JJB with my agent. The medical test was first, and then the contract signing with the director happened at midday. The press were there to take pictures, but I didn't get my first "Charles N'Zogbia" Wigan shirt until the next day. Me and my agent agreed to give some of the money from the deal to charity [a children's hospital in Wigan and a cancer hospice in the north-east that is treating N'Zogbia's first Newcastle manager, Bobby Robson].
After signing I met some of the players: Titus Bramble, whom I knew from Newcastle, Antoine Sibierski, Mido. You check each other out, you talk, shake hands. I couldn't train with them that day because of the medical and signing the contract, but I knew my first session was the next morning, so I didn't do anything special for the rest of the day. I chilled at the hotel and watched some television - ITV, nothing I remember. I flicked on to Sky Sports News and saw a bit about myself, but I don't normally like to watch it. I remembered I had a DVD so I put it on - American Gangster with Denzel Washington.
I had dinner on my own at the restaurant in the hotel, just some pasta. I was in bed by nine o'clock, ready for training with my new team the next day.
I didn't have a chance to say goodbye to my friends in Newcastle that weekend because things went so quickly. But I went back a week later to pack up some stuff from my old house - I live in a place in Bolton now - and saw some of them to say goodbye.
