Secrets of the summer window reveal how clubs like Huddersfield Town get transfer business done

The transfer window can be a dizzying time for clubs, players, fans and journalists alike, with rumours flying around and deals being struck left, right and centre (sometimes more of one than the other). But what is actually involved in making a move happen?

The work begins months before the transfer window even opens, and even once it does there is a lot of unseen work and tricks of the trade that fans may not even be aware of. Here is your guide to how things unfold, how clubs identify the players they are going to pursue, how negotiations work, where transfer rumours come from and what is involved in those mysterious medicals.

We would stress here that this article features a lot general practices that are common across English football based on industry experience beyond Huddersfield, and not all of this necessarily applies to things that are happening at Town right now - but where possible we have tried to pepper in some Town-specific examples along the way.

The first question, naturally, is what positions a club needs new players in for. This is always likely to be the areas of most need either because of a lack of numbers or injury worries; areas where a club thinks they can get a big uplift in performance by signing a player who offers an improvement on what they already have; or positions where the current options are perfectly acceptable but the club wish to go in a different tactical direction.

The process of scouting is a whole article in itself, but clubs will use a combination of in-person watching, video analysis and statistical analysis to work out who they might want to go for. Clubs will then rank their targets in an approximate order, with most clubs having a shortlist of strongly preferred players