One way to boot motivation right out the window.

I'LL never get used to the idea of a transfer deadline at the end of August.

Although most 'big clubs' have been restricted for years by the European transfer deadline, this week's mad scramble to fill up empty squad places is bringing everyone else into line - except, of course, the Nationwide clubs, who still don't officially know if they can go on trading or not.

At a time when players rights as employees are increasingly under the spotlight, and a growing number of footballers are thinking about alternative careers as opportunities become more and more scarce, how can football justify pulling up the drawbridge for four or five months?

How does telling footballers that there will be nobody in to replace them if they don't get their act together going to motivate them to improve their performance? How does the financial stability of smaller clubs (and even bigger clubs) benefit from having to keep a large squad together or risk throwing kids in way too early and risking their development?

The transfer market has kept English football exciting and fresh for a century.

What benefit, exactly, does the window bring to football? At a time when the powers that be are beginning to get sniffy about players' freedom of movement, does this manoeuvre put our game in a stronger or weaker legal position?

Football, like any sport, tends to be better when artificial conditions and unnecessary made up rules are banished.

While a supreme optimist might suggest that a manager with his squad in place will be forced to work hard on the training field, is this tenuous advantage really enough to warrant all the sacrifices that come with it?

Or is it just another example of the football authorities trying to do something for the sake of it or because it is fashionable?

Moving on to two difficult issues.

Following the death of the two schoolgirls in Soham, thousands of football fans, at the FA's instigation, took part in a superbly well-respected minute's silence.

While not wishing to take away anything from the sense of shock this crime caused, let's not forget that tragedies happen every day, in all parts of the world.

To mark all of them with a national minute's silence would devalue the purpose of that tribute.

Millions of people will want to find their own way of marking this high-profile and horrific incident, but football and other sports really should allow their supporters to choose their own way of remembering, while reserving the minutes silence for death of those with close ties to the game and its spectators.

Secondly, the disgraceful news from Belfast.

When are idiots going to learn to keep politics and - most of all - the politics of religion out of football.

The hoodlums who hounded Neil Lennon out of Windsor Park might not realise it, but Northern Ireland isn't awash with quality players.

Since the heady days of Spain and Mexico, Northern Ireland has become a backwater in world footballing terms Jim Harvey and Sammy McIllroy have a difficult enough challenge without the risk of seeing almost half their potential players declare themselves unavailable or pull on the colours of the Irish Republic.

And should the rhetoric ever erupt into actual violence, expect FIFA to pull the plug on international football in the province like it did in the 1970s, except this time, there will be no return.