Football’s unseemly, increasingly obscene, global trolley-dash

And breathe. The Sky Sports Countdown Clock has finally hit zero. Fabrizio Romano has switched off his phone and gone for a long, well-earned lie down. The legions of football fans on Social Media Disgraces with no apparent interest in actual football have gone silent. Finally, the summer transfer window has closed. Praise the lord with a loud hallelujah.

With apologies to The Fiver’s excitable speculation-mongering half-brother the Rumour Mill, the comparatively sane among us remain unmoved by speculation regarding this relentless horse-trading. We view the breathless tweets and counter-tweets, rumours and counter-rumours of those tasked – and often enthused – by this kind of nonsense with a jaundiced eye. We prefer instead to just wait and see. Wait and see who’s gone where for how much once the dust has settled at the end of this unseemly, increasingly obscene and vulgar global summer trolley-dash.

Based in a rudderless country facing a cost of living crisis, where in one of his final speeches the sitting prime minister advised people – hundreds and thousands of them match-going football fans – facing winter misery or worse to replace their old kettle with a new one in order to shave £10 off incoming energy bills of more than £7,000, the Premier League’s astonishing net spend of £1.13bn (next highest: La Liga with £40m) should be a source of acute embarrassment, but is being trumpeted in all the usual places as some sort of triumph. As if it really doesn’t matter that we mugs are being grifted til our pips squeeze in order to help pay for all this.

[We interrupt this Fiver to bring you news just in from the Fulham website: “All seats in the upper tier at the Fulham v Chelsea match are priced at £100 for adults and