“Transfer sagas are dead. Well, the classic, perfectly-sized sagas of the golden era, anyway. Bit of tapping-up, some balking at the asking price, a cheeky transfer request being slapped in, an 11th-hour hijacking, done deal, ‘as soon as I heard they were interested, there was no other place I wanted to go’. But something weird has happened. Transfers are now taking ages. Or are they? It’s the transfer window’s Muller-Lyer illusion: maybe transfers are just as long as they always were, but something is making them seem more drawn-out. …”
The Athletic