JANUARY does not just take a very long time for people who aim to keep it dry, it’s a hellish month simply for the endless transfer drivel ladled our way by journalists and fans alike.

The month-long window where side-switching is permitted turns every bore into an instant expert on the numbers and sense behind every potential move.

With the blind confidence of a deliberately handpicked dumbass contestant on The Apprentice, the BBC’s near 20-year-old annual celebration of workplace bullying, we have to listen to people assure us that this player isn’t worth this, while another deal is a shrewd bargain. Somehow everybody knows whether £20million is a good deal, but £25m is paying over the odds.

The journalists equally love all the speculation because nothing fuels web traffic more than a protracted negotiation over many days: they can write the same story endlessly about a deal being close and cash in on endless clicks from us rabid fans.

We can think of more sensitive words but football is an addiction. Over many years, people’s brains are conditioned to demand every last detail about their team. It would need hours and hours of CBT for this to be reversed, as it sets in as a child and rarely goes away on its own or by sucking limes.

In that sense we are lost out here, whatever your team, casually tossing around obscenely large figures as if it’s a game of monopoly. I know, I know… all the big clubs have fantastic charitable arms, but there is still a disconnect between the front pages of newspapers, where so many can’t afford to pay the energy bill barons to keep their home warm for an hour, and the back pages where money is endlessly available.

A huge rolling mountain of money built on our inability to look away from the game, our collective addiction.

In a country where people go to the library to keep warm, maybe it’s time for a Robin Hood tax on this ugly market: each transfer fee agreed beyond £20m, say, should have something bigger than VAT attached.

If Rishi Sunak thinks this will crash everything like his predecessors mugged everybody with a mortgage, then let’s keep it simple: every team in the top league must sell a squad player they don’t use much (going rate is £15m) and donate the income to a good cause.

Arsenal might lose Rob Holding but his departure could pay for retrofitting some schools. Spurs could ditch Emerson Royal and pay for the £20 uplift in Universal Credit to be restored to people in Tottenham, and so on.

An annual windfall for public services would make the long month of January much more palatable.