Sitting on the dock of the Bay window

I am by nature averse to the hysteria induced by football transfers. It's marketing, something to get fans to buy when there are no games to watch. Transfers have become important because watching Premier League football is so expensive and difficult now for the majority of fans, and because the league's global fanbase is necessarily excluded from the in-person experience, so clubs have to sell them something vicarious: the idea of 'winning the window'.

Like many of football's attempts to market itself, elements of this have backfired. 'Winning the window' requires giving barrows of lucre to rival clubs, rich footballers and their avaricious agents, all while trying to convince investors that this will be good for growth, somehow. It also means the suits behind the scenes getting hunted by the fans whose connection to the club now feels so vicarious, and getting rated or hated for their work as if they too were out of form left-backs.

Hiring a manager and buying players used to shield football club owners from that stuff, as those performances would be what fans were judging on Saturday afternoons: the directors could shrug, claim to be as perplexed as the fans, and get ready to sack the coach. Now, emboldened by years of playing Football Manager and being bombarded by advertising that turns their passion into currency, a lot of fans don't bother rating the players anymore — they're just avatars they can abuse over Instagram. They're coming after the executives, armed with their own KPIs and a spreadsheet, just at the point when Profit & Sustainability Regulations have made transfers more difficult, both to carry out and to explain, than ever before.

Leeds United's Championship winning season, game by game, as written at Leedsista.com.

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It can be argued that some of Leeds United's blunders at the end of this summer's transfer window were not of their making. An inexperienced sporting director was likely less of an impediment than the £500m added to the Premier League's record spend. The new normal of Brentford and Bournemouth trading players between them for £42m, cash that PSR simply won't allow Leeds to spend even if they have it, is probably a bigger deal: football clubs care more about the green of your money than the greyness of your beard. Inexperience? Fulham would have sold Harry Wilson to a school team if they had enough PSR headroom. As for the final day panic, Leeds were not alone. Alexander Isak's transfer was confirmed in the middle of the night. Marc Guehi's was on and off again hourly. Emi Martinez was sitting scowling waiting for Old Trafford to call, while Aston Villa's sporting director Monchi — Victor Orta's mentor — brought in some panic loans to cheer Unai Emery up. What were Chelsea doing? Far, far too much. Everyone had all summer to do deals. Everyone was in a flap on the final day. Some just flapped better than others.

We can argue those things, and then still have absolutely no sympathy for the public relations pickle Leeds have got themselves into. This is what you get for buying a football club in the 2020s. Your key performance indicator is now the most rotten of metrics, social media vibes, and you owe your livelihood to Fabrizio Romano tweeting something positive. If you're the chairman, Paraag Marathe, you owe your comms department not to leave quotes lying around about doing deals in your sleep and spending every last penny and going full tilt and how, "With all due respect to the other clubs, I think we’re different. We have an opportunity and we have scale that nobody else has", not if you're then going to make everything look like that opportunity has been amateurishly missed. The window might have been halfway bricked up with some very burly defenders, but the window was not won.

'Winning the window' itself has little worth. A team could make the most thrilling, record-breaking new signing from a big rival you can imagine, then they can pull their hamstring and that'll be that plan screwed for months. If it's Liam Delap's hamstring, it's everybody's plan in tatters. Winning football matches is what counts — and entertaining fans, but one thing at a time. The main judgement of September 2nd, beyond 'optics' or 'being embarrassing' or any other distractions, is whether the squad has the right amounts of good players.

On that score we'll have to wait until Daniel Farke's next press conference to hear how he'll approach the fact that, according to him several times in the last few weeks, it does not. And his is one of the opinions that counts here, as he is the one who has to pick a winning team out of the players in the building who were not won in the window. The other opinions that count belong to 49ers Enterprises and their executives, though, and managing director Robbie Evans has already been telling the press that the window was very good actually and PSR should not be a "fungible shadow scapegoat" which I'm sure is what we were all thinking too and Daniel Farke "had the same view we did". Well, he probably had to. There was always a chance they'd decide that if Daniel really doesn't think the squad has enough attackers, they could find another manager who does. Game of opinions, and all that.

An argumentative sacking feels unlikely from a club that handed transfer strategy to a promoted bootroom this summer, after Angus Kinnear, Nick Hammond, Gretar Steinsson and Jordan Miles all left their roles as chief executive, transfer consultant, technical director and head of recruitment, respectively. 49ers Enterprises looked in-house for their replacements. Robbie Evans, whose work with the 49ers goes back to 2011, was promoted to managing director. The new head of recruitment was Alex Davies, a thirteen year veteran of United's analysis department. The new sporting director was Adam Underwood, continuing his climb since joining as head of academy in 2014. Rather than a bloodless coup after their first summer in the job, stand by for a holistic review, one to one appraisals and some upskilling online courses.

It's a very 49ers approach. Co-chair Denise York's dad bought the 49ers in 1977. She and her husband John took control in 1999. They passed day-to-day business onto their son Jed in 2008. Paraag Marathe started there in 2001, rising to chief operating officer in 2010. John Lynch has been general manager since 2017. Kyle Shanahan has been head coach since 2017. Al Guido has been president of business operations since 2016. Morrie Eisenberg, who was promoted to Leeds' chief business officer this summer (the other half an Angus), first worked with the 49ers in 2012 and was rehired as an adviser in 2023. Clicking through the Nine Guys' staff bios, it's hard to find senior people without long tenure and/or an internal rise. They promote from within and stand by their guys.

Kyle Shanahan's time as head coach is the story that tells them all. Season by season he's won six games, then four, thirteen — reaching the Super Bowl — six, ten, thirteen, twelve — another Super Bowl — then, last season, six. The Niners have ridden Shanahan's losing seasons, believing he'll buck up to winning seasons next time. Only three of 32 current head coaches have been in their jobs longer, and while it might sound like corporate bullshit, winning together, losing together and learning together is something the 49ers, as an organisation — as a family, I guess they'd prefer — live by for real.

They have not normally, however, had to live with English football expectations. This actually should be working in their favour. Just the other week head coach Shanahan and general manager John Lynch held a press conference — together. It is not unusual, in the NFL, for coaches and executives to sit side by side and answer questions about their work. That doesn't mean it's cosy. The 49ers are having a vaguely Leeds United time of things this off-season, adding to my theory that we'll drag them to the doldrums and not the other way round, as after tying their key players down early they've suffered a bunch of injuries in key departments and star player Jauan Jennings has been playing hell about his contract offer. 'This was definitely NOT a cheery Shanahan and Lynch presser' posted San Francisco sportswriter Tim Kawakami. But those joint pressers are something that, in Leeds, they're able to avoid. It would be fascinating if Daniel Farke sat down this week, side by side with Paraag Marathe, and held a Q&A with the local press. Just nobody tell them how that went for Terry Venables and Peter Ridsdale.