It is that time of year again as the days tick down until the , to use accepted parlance, slams shut.
Expect more rumour and wild speculation while football reporters in television studios wait anxiously for their shiny mobile phones lined up neatly in front of them to ring with top-grade information from sources very high up at various high-profile clubs.
It might be wrong, it might be a guilty pleasure, but I think there is something exciting and slightly intoxicating about those final few hours on transfer deadline day (even if very few big deals actually go through); the little clock ticking down in the corner of the screen, rumours of players checking into hotels in unfamiliar cities and the grainy images of so and so heading into such and such a training ground.
If football is entertainment then deadline day really does deliver. The race against the clock is almost cinematic, a football thriller, but instead of bombs going off the hero must bring in the star striker that will make the difference between silverware and an empty trophy cabinet. Whether he then gets the girl, I have no idea.
But in the Football League - and it is the 72 clubs that comprise the bottom three divisions that concern me here - the story is a bit more gritty, more than the polished vacuous blockbusters of .
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It was more out of respect and courtesy than anything else that saw driving down to Shrewsbury earlier this year.
He had been invited down for an interview for the position of manager and, being a decent sort of man, went to hear what they had to say.
Several months had passed since Simpson had been in November 2007 with the team 21st in the Championship table and he had been enjoying his time away from the stresses of management.
Simpson had been doing some work for the Football Association, helping Brian Eastwick with the England Under-19 team. He had been on a scouting trip to Serbia. It was enjoyable and low pressure.
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The first night of international football this season and hopefully we'll get some idea of how our teams are shaping up ahead of the forthcoming World Cup qualifiers.
By the way, just before I look at the games, a quick word on the new season.
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once said that the best way to make a million in football is to invest 10 million, the suggestion being that for whatever reason the other nine disappears along the way.
It would be a fair assumption that the Royals chairman had players' wages in mind to at least some degree.
After all, as far back as May 2003 he opined from his luxury home: "There are three things wrong with football: players' wages, players' wages and players' wages. If you sort that out, you sort football out as far as I'm concerned."
As such I guess nobody should have been all that surprised when the 67-year-old recently told
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Chester boss Simon Davies declared that "it was totally his fault" after his team on the opening day of the season.
He also declared that he was "bamboozled" and "lost for words" and asked for a response from his players against Leeds in the Carling Cup on Tuesday.
Davies got some kind of response alright, though I imagine that trailing 5-1 after 35 minutes was not exactly the script he had in mind.
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The Football League is under way - and how.
I wrote our live coverage of the Championship on Saturday and there was a point when I was completely and utterly at sixes and sevens.
It came at approximately five minutes past three as goal after goal smashed into the back of the net. There were seven of them in the first six minutes. I fully hold my hand up here - my fingers could not simply type fast enough to keep up. If you were reading and felt that some of the goals were a little lacking in detail then I can only apologise.
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We've all seen the images on Match of the Day.
It is the final day of the season and invariably a lovely sunny early summer afternoon. The camera pans to the sight of a supporter, alone now in the empty stand, a tear in the eye, a shattered dream - the brutal and cruel face of relegation from the Premier League.
Birmingham, Reading and Derby all went through it last season.
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Nothing excites a football fan over the summer months quite as much as a few new faces.
I have always enjoyed turning up for a pre-season fixture to take a look at the summer signings. The fact that you can never really conclude anything about a player in a pedestrian and more or less completely meaningless game against some local amateur outfit takes a back seat while you try to wrestle with the big questions.
Are they any good? Has the gaffer finally found the missing piece of the jigsaw? Does this guy ever kick the ball with his left foot? How on earth did the manager find someone from the second tier of the Belgian league?
Come to think of it, summer signings probably don't do any harm to season ticket sales and a constant flow of transfer speculation keeps the local paper ticking over during the fallow summer weeks.
But with the , just what has been the best bit of business during the summer?
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Hello, I'm Paul Fletcher and I mainly write about life in the Football League. I have a great enthusiasm for a whole range of sports and love to spread the word about the great game of rugby league. You can also follow me on .