Necessity is the mother of invention – a phrase widely attributed to the philosopher Plato around 2,400 years ago. Probably right around the time the Greeks first introduced the transfer window.
Roughly translated, it means if your need for something outstrips your current ability to get it, you’ll find a way. In a football sense, that usually means you buy your way out of trouble but if all you have are your wits rather than an oligarch’s chequebook, if all you have are players you think aren’t going to get you where you’ve promised everyone you’ll be, then it becomes a whole lot harder. If you’re in the doldrums, what you have no one wants, and what you need no one wants to give you. Which is why, in Scottish football certainly, these deals are the outliers.
The swap. The trade. The exchange.
In American sports, between franchises? They’re inured in the culture, where GMs and agents and coaches wheel and deal players and future draft picks like Wall Street commodities. Here? They’re a rarity because balancing the scales to keep everyone happy is nigh-on impossible.
So in this Nutmeg transfer special, we’ve spoken firstly to both the traded and the trader to get a handle on why they’re so hard to execute, and why so few of them happen. Then comes a Top Ten of some of the more interesting ones that did make it over the line. Because in an exchange of equals, some always end up more equal than others…
This is a preview of Gordon Waddell’s full article, published in Issue 40 of Nutmeg.
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