Neil Harris has claimed the deadline day transfer scramble is a made-for-TV event that prevents more deals going through than it smooths.
The Cardiff City manager is still to make a single signing in January with more than half the month gone before deadline day on January 31.
Harris says he wants to add three players to his group to enhance the Bluebirds’ chances of launching a play-off surge, but says the window is geared towards television drama, rather than actually trading players.
“Ideally, you would like three players to go out and three to come in on January 1,” says Harris, whose team are away at Birmingham City on Saturday.
“If that doesn’t happen, we have to try and avoid the last minute scramble, but let’s face it, why is there a transfer scramble?
“Because that’s what everyone loves to see – that’s what makes the reporters’ jobs so exciting and what makes Sky Sports what it is.
“Because there is a deadline, people think they can go right up to it. There will be 40 deals that get done and 200 that don’t because they run out of time.
“The merry-go-round starts and that’s why it goes to the wire. I prefer to be set and organised, but if we have to go to deadline day then so be it.”
Cardiff and Harris actually have a fixture on deadline day – at home to Reading – but Harris insists he is not concerned about the club’s lack of activity during which time they have had a bid of £2.3m for Wales striker Kieffer Moore knocked back by Wigan.
“I think concerned is the wrong word,” added Harris, who pinpoints the change in manager at Cardiff as well as the shake-up in the recruitment staff as a reason for the failure to do any business.
“The reality is that clubs who have signed players – and there’s not a lot of clubs that have signed players – you look at the stability within their club since the start of the season, from pre-season, working with the players, having stability off the field, the recruitment department, things like that, it enables you to be in a very good position each transfer window.
“It’s a bit different for us, with me not being here that long and with a new recruitment department being set up, it doesn’t make it as easy to do business.
“So we are in that period at the moment. But we have identified players and I have certainly identified players who can add quality to the group. If we can get them, then brilliant.
“I am really happy with the group but I’m not saying we’re not going to add to it. That’s not the case, we are trying, but again, as ever, it has to be the right personnel.”
Birmingham sit in 18th-place of the Championship table going into the weekend but ended a run of six games without a win (five of them losses) with a 2-1 win at Luton Town last weekend.
Cardiff are currently 12th, four points off Sheffield Wednesday in 6th – they’ve lost just two of Harris’ 13 games in charge, both coming away from home.