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Daily Mail, Thursday, August 8, 201979
the Runcorn Bridge! We do double
sessions, as would have been the
case at Finch Farm, but it feels so
much harder given how high up we
are.
One day, for a bit of fun, me, Theo
Walcott, Gylfi Sigurdsson, Jordan
Pickford and Mason Holgate decided
to go for a walk up Le Mont Fort. The
scenery at the top was incredible but
when we climbed the final few steps,
we were all blowing like mad. It
didn’t feel like fun then!
You feel tight in your muscles after
training, but it’s completely normal.
The good thing about training in the
mountains was having the river on
hand... some of the lads jumped
straight in rather than heading
back for ice baths and the pool.
Personally? I’ll take the pool.
The first game was good. I had a
goal disallowed — harshly! — for
offside but the clean sheet was the
most important thing. You might
say it’s only a friendly, but you set
standards. You treat everything as if
it is a Premier League game and you
take pride in a clean sheet.
HOW CRUCIAL ARE THESE
WEEKS IN BUILDING
RAPPORT IN THE SQUAD?
EVERYONE kept in touch over the
summer. We have a WhatsApp group
and Andre, thankfully, never left! We
didn’t pester him when he was
making his final decision, but we
were always hopeful he’d sign after
his year on loan. He’s a top player
and it’s great he’s here.
It was the same with Delphy. We
had seen the news linking him to us
and I was hoping it would happen,
as I know from being with him at
England that he’s a top player. He
arrived late on Monday night, so it
must have been quite an experience
having breakfast with 20 lads want-
ing to speak to you. I know some
teams have a night out when they
are on tour, but we will do that once
all our signings are in. We talk about
what we want to achieve.
The manager has brought it up in
the past — where do you want to be?
Where can you go? We want to reach
our goals.SO, WHAT DID YOU DO FOR
TEAM BONDING?
WHITE-WATER rafting in the
Torrent de Cotterg river! It was a
right laugh. There were four boats,
10 in each. The manager and his
football staff won the race. We were
out for 45 minutes to an hour.
Nobody tried to sink them!THURSDAY, JULY 25
FINCH FARM, LIVERPOOL
An unexpected setback. The night
before at Wigan, in a game that
finished 0-0, Keane had been due
to play 45 minutes. An aerial
collision with striker Lee Evans
had drastic consequences that
totally altered his programme.I WAS elbowed and needed nine
stitches above my right eye. I had to
come off straight away.
Very frustrating. It stopped me
doing contact training for four days
and meant missing games against
Sevilla and Mainz, which was so
annoying. You might not think
missing 60 or 90 minutes is a big deal
but it makes a difference.
All you can do in those circum-
stances is run. It means you have
to play catch-up. It wasn’t a great
challenge. A little interruption at
this point is not ideal.SATURDAY, AUGUST 3
BREMEN, GERMANYEverton draw 0-0 in their last
match against Werder Bremen.
A lack of goals — just three — has
been a theme for Silva’s squad,
who know the Italy striker Moise
Kean is about to arrive for
£30million. They now have clarity
about what must be done before
they head to Selhurst Park for the
opening game.IN terms of being physically ready,
this game was massive. It was also
important to work on my partner-
ship with Yerry Mina, who came
last summer from Barcelona. His
English is improving. He knows the
basics now. Check your shoulder,
move up... little things like that.
He is trying to speak to me more
now, to be fair to him. It will develop.
Will I learn Spanish? I hadn’t
thought about it, but of course I
would, if it helped. I’d be willing to
say he would learn Mancunian
quicker than I would get the hang of
Spanish! He’s a bright lad and he is
doing well.
Yerry wants to improve, but we
all do. We know we need to score
more goals — nobody needs to tell
us that. We are turning down too
many opportunities to shoot, but
you get these things out of the way
in pre-season. We showed at times
how good we can be, but we need
consistency. We want to break into
the top six, then target a cup run.
There is no reason why we can’t go
all the way in one of the cups. Other
clubs have done it, so why can’t we?
It has been too long since this club
won a trophy. Far too long.
Pre-season is a fresh start for us
all. We are ready to go again.Buy or sell, it’s
a nightmare to
get deals done!
THERE may have already
been more than a billion
pounds splashed out in this
transfer window, but these
final few hours are some of
the most frantic in the
football calendar.
As managers try to secure
the last-minute buy that
might save their job — or
propel them up the league —
deadline day has become the
stuff of legend.
But for the men and women
at the sharp end — the
players, managers, agents
and club admin staff — the
hours running up to 5pm are
anything but fun. Here,
speaking anonymously for
obvious reasons, they share
a snapshot of those manic
final hours... including how
one club tried to sign 10
players in a day!TOP-FLIGHT MANAGER
ONE really sticks out in my
mind. We sold three players
on the day and the place was
absolute chaos. But we had a
game that night, too. I’m in
my office at the stadium
minutes before kick-off,
on the phone to the chief
executive of another club
trying to get one coming in
over the line.
My assistant manager is out
on the pitch doing the
warm-up with the players.
I’m getting really frustrated
— it’s just not happening —
and end up missing out on
this target. It was at the end
of a dreadful window for me
but my night went from bad
to worse. We’re chasing the
game, the opposition’s
goalkeeping coach has
hidden the ball in their
dugout and I’ve lost my
temper. I end up getting sent
to the stands! You try to
manage your emotions but
it’s really difficult.AGENT ONE
THERE was one club I was
working with in League One
and they hadn’t ever done
an international transfer
before. You need the
Transfer Matching System
(TMS) for that and nobody
there had any training for it.
I was there until midnight
with the player, waiting
and waiting, and it just didn’t
get done.
He was gutted. It’s an admin
problem, what can you do?
It was four or five hours and
they couldn’t do it. Listen,
these are often your only
chances of getting a move
away from certain situations.
Then there is the
extravagance. I’ve probably
been in three private jets on
deadline day alone and thatall feels surreal. No check-in,
no waiting, the jet doors shut
and you’re off. One player
had two clubs after him. One
offered him a Ryanair flight,
the other booked a jet.
Which one do you think he
went to in the end?TOP-FLIGHT
CLUB SECRETARY
EVERYTHING was done with
one deal on deadline day a
few years ago, back in the
fax machine era. It was
about to be completed, the
fax was being sent. Then a
member of our medical
team runs in and screams
that there is a problem with
the player’s medical that
needs ironing out.
So we had this situation
where you’re having to claw
this piece of paper out of the
fax machine to stop the deal
being completed!
These days you’re battling
with the TMS. Everything has
to marry up, so you can find
yourself chained to a desk
throughout the day just
inputting the specific details.
If both ends are not exactly
the same, the transfer won’t
go through. It can be
incredibly stressful,
especially when the deadline
looms and there are a
couple of transfers
happening simultaneously.AGENT TWO
ONE club wanted to sign
more than 10 players in a day
and, believe me, there was
an incident every five
minutes. Failed medical,
timekeeping, paperwork not
getting done.
It is a proper 6am until
midnight job. You need a
charger at all times,
answering one call when on
another. It’s like buying a
house. One has to go before
you can move.
We walked out of a club at
11.50pm not knowing
whether a deal had got over
the line. We’d been relying
on two other transfers
happening, that domino
effect. You can sit there not
knowing and things can be
so frustrating. Something
will happen to knock it off
course. For the strangest of
reasons, too. Life-changing
transfers can hinge on
someone being stuck in
traffic or not!
You can get there and he’ll
fail a medical. You feel
dreadful for the player.
They go back to their club
and it’s difficult because it’s
known that a fee had been
agreed. Sometimes the
players don’t get accepted
back by the fans.JACK GAUGHAN
GETS THE INSIDE TRACK ON THE
CHAOS OF TRANSFER DEADLINE DAYSplash down: Keane (circled) rafting GETTY IMAGESSwiss style: Sigurdsson (left) and Keane GETTY IMAGESHead boy: Keane plays against Monaco GETTY IMAGESПОДГОТОВИЛА
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