I never go to ‘The Sale' at Harrods or most of the other heavily televised sales.

The reason I never go is because I know that by the time I get there, there will only be the tat left for the likes of me. The real bargains will have gone already.

I imagine the transfer window is something like that – in the summer Billy turned up late at the sales with a fairly slim wallet and a shopping list only to find himself sternly directed to the jumble stall to rummage through what's left over trying to find a bargain here and there. The truth was that the real gems had long gone well before the ‘sales' even began.

When I was at school, if there was a particularly appealing tea with appetising cakes, the big lads – no matter where they were in the queue - would reach over, lick their finger, and put it on their favoured cake, usually the biggest one. That meant that it was reserved for them and no-one else. The more bold smaller boys risked a punch or a kick if they put their licked finger on a particularly favoured cake ahead of one of the bigger lads. But there was some semblance of rules – it wasn't Lord of the Flies run amok. At least everyone got a cake. No-one went around putting their finger encased in saliva on all the cakes they fancied – just the one they liked the best. And no-one nicked a cake that had already been ‘fingered'.

You can't say that about the Premiership. The biggest clubs lick their fingers and put it on their favoured player well before the transfer window (sometimes as long as a year) and if said player likes the attention along with the club's agreement, then it's all over bar the signing on the dotted line and the pay-off to the agent. Sometimes it isn't even one or two but several players. Occasionally there's the suspicion that the finger-licking has been done purely to spite another club or stop them from buying the player rather than from any intrinsic need of improving the squad.

When it's done properly the buying club approaches the selling club and gets agreement first before the player is aware that they've been earmarked to go to a new club in six months time. But now and again, a club chairman will complain that their player was approached without their permission and bleat about “the rules”.

There's a phrase for it – it's called “tapping up”. And it's against the rules. But this rule is rarely enforced. How do you enforce it? There are so many ways around it – clubs players meeting up at international games, agents having a chat, managers calling the injured (?) player to see how they are getting on and so on. Of course, now and again, there's a dispute between the big boys over one player – similar to that of my school days, you would get two burly lads shaping up over who put their finger on the biggest cake first.

What no-one at the FA seems to care about is that ‘tapping up' is a breach of the rules and only now and again a club is ticked off with a derisory fine – see this BBC article.

The Germans are at least more honest about it. A player who wants to play for Bayern Munich simply signs a kind of pre-nuptial agreement and then off they go to BM at the end of the season and everyone knows they're going.

This finger-licking business – with or without the club's permission – means that for the likes of us, we're reduced to the leftovers or the jumble as far as the Premiership is concerned which is partly why managers like Coppell and Megson are calling for the abolition of the transfer window.

It is a pernicious business but I think that for Derby County the silver lining in the cloud is that with Parachute money, and possibly the American investment, we're going to be doing a fair amount of finger-licking ourselves for the Championship season. We can pick off a couple of the best Championship players, a few of the better players in the twilight relegation zone of the Premiership and maybe one or two of the fringe players from the Premiership mid-table teams who want a more regular game. And of course, there are those plying their trade abroad who want to come and don't mind too much where they come as long as there's a chance of playing in the Premiership.

The future is black and white as is the saliva on my finger...

Photo: Action Images

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