FL Accept Transfer Window

The transfer window closes for Premiership clubs today. The anticipated frantic activity will be even more chaotic in a year’s time as the Football League have accepted defeat in their efforts to stop FIFA enforcing their transfer window restrictions.The transfer window closes for Premiership clubs today. The anticipated frantic activity will be even more chaotic in a year’s time as the Football League have accepted defeat in their efforts to stop FIFA enforcing their transfer window restrictions.

They will now join Premiership clubs in operating under the constraints from this summer onwards.

The Football League wrote to all 72 member clubs last week to confirm that as of next season, transfer windows will apply in this country beyond the Premier League.

The news means that clubs in the Coca-Cola Championship, plus Leagues One and Two, will not be able to transfer players in and out at any time of the year, other than during the close season or the month of January.

In the letter, Football League chairman Sir Brian Mawhinney expressed his regret that his organisation had been unable to secure any further concessions from FIFA to allow lower division teams the ability to continue to trade outside of the windows.

Sir Brian also confirmed that the world governing body’s executive committee had now ratified and approved the revised rules governing the “status and transfer of players”, with the intention that these rules apply “universally” and with “no exceptions” from the 2005-06 season.

The League’s board of directors will now form a working party to consider the full extent of the implications for clubs in its three divisions.

Director of operations Andy Williamson told the Press Association: “There’s not going to be any further extended period of flexibility.

“This is the third season where the Premier League have applied transfer windows, where we’ve had an exemption. That will not apply any more.”

Reacting to the news, director of League Two club Bristol Rovers Kevin Spencer said: “This is bad news for clubs in the lower divisions.”

He told the club’s official web site: “All clubs will have to operate with smaller squads, and it will place an even greater emphasis on youth systems, with younger players inevitably having to be called upon earlier than might otherwise be best for them should injuries or suspensions dictate.

“Having to trade only in transfer windows will have a massively negative impact on cashflow for clubs like Bristol Rovers, and the kind of steps that clubs like ourselves took last season by signing so many players on the old transfer deadline day in order to avoid relegation will no longer be possible.”

Of course, the traditional transfer deadline day of the fourth Thursday in March (24 March 2005) will apply for the last time this season.