I'd love to know the actual reason these signings take so long.
I know all the clichés; there's a lot that goes into a transfer, medicals etc, it's not like Football Manager, and so on. But on deadline day deals get done within a day out of nowhere. So why is it that when it's not deadline day it takes so long to get a transfer done? I understand that sometimes the selling club might want to leave it until the end of the window or until they've signed replacements. But in the case of Hughes for example, how can it take so long to finalise after a fee has been agreed, when the fee was supposedly the one thing holding it up for the last few weeks? Presumably at least one party for some reason must be holding it up to some extent, but I can't imagine why that'd be in anybody's interest. Surely Hughes will be desperate to get it done as soon as possible, with every extra day he can train with us being valuable to his prospects of being in the team as soon as possible, and surely we'd want that too. Can't imagine how delaying it would benefit Wigan at this point. So again, even allowing for all the clichés about it not being simple, I'd love to know what it is specifically that holds these deals up, and why they're able to fast-track it when they really need to.