Why I loved a deadline-day deal - and never saw them as a risk

Transfer deadline day has become an event for fans and something of a media circus in recent years, but it has always been an important day for managers, even before the current system of having transfer windows was introduced in 2002.

Get it right - and get the player or players you want in at the 11th hour - and you can turn your season around.

On the other hand, if you don't get important deals done or lose someone without replacing them, it can take the wind out of your sails and deflate a team involved in a promotion bid or survival battle.

I never saw making late signings as a risk, because I always thought the players I was bringing in would make the team better.

Looking back at the transfer deadline day deals I was involved in was really interesting. Yes, I had a few stinkers, but also some really good ones. A theme emerged which showed that if you can do good business, it can really change the fortunes of the team.

At Crystal Palace on the final day of the January window in 2014, for example, the permanent additions of Scott Dann, Wayne Hennessey, Joe Ledley and also Tom Ince on loan, sparked an amazing turnaround.

We were in a relegation battle and in serious trouble near the bottom of the Premier League when they arrived but we ended up 11th, 12 points clear of the bottom three, after securing our survival with three games to go.

All four new players were great positives who played a huge part in our improvement. I am not saying they upgraded the quality of our players but they gave us a better balance as a team, which I felt we lacked before they came in.

Gaining that balance enabled us to stay in the Premier League.

It was a very similar story at Stoke a few years earlier when we had just qualified for the Europa League group stage and I was trying to strengthen my squad at the start of the season.

As I've explained previously in this column, I always had the final decision on any transfer, and yet one of the most influential deadline day deals I ever made was nearly cut short by a member of non-footballing staff.

At the end of August 2011, Peter Crouch's time was up at Tottenham and he was looking to move north. Spurs boss Harry Redknapp rang and made me aware of the situation but, after a few phone calls, it was clear Peter's wages would not be affordable for us.

A day later - deadline day - Harry rang again and said his executive chairman, Daniel Levy, was really keen to strike a deal.

So, over long discussions and with the clock ticking down to the end of the window, Spurs made adjustments to Peter's situation and, with the guarantee that he would sign a longer contract with us than was originally planned, I believed my chairman Peter Coates would back the signing.

I spoke to the chairman, who spoke to his daughter Denise and son John to confirm if the deal was feasible for us.

I believe both were in favour, but Coates rang me up with a negative from someone else on the basis that Crouch's age - he was 30 - and the length of his contract, meant we would get no return on the £10m we were paying for him, which was a club record fee.

I told him that he would get that £10m back tenfold, because Crouchy would guarantee us Premier League football for the next four years, which was worth far more than any returnable sale for him or any other player we signed instead.

As soon as I said that, Coates said "yes, I understand", and put the phone down. The deal was done and the rest is history.

Crouchy played seven seasons for Stoke in the Premier League and was a fantastic player for us - he is a fabulous person as well.

He brought us up another level, off the pitch as well as on it, because he is such a big character and the players bounced off him so well.

Whether they go through on deadline day or not, all transfer windows are full of ups and downs - not all my signings were as good as the ones above! - and the last few hours before they close are followed almost religiously by every football fan up and down the country.

Will something happen to increase your chances of success or survival, or the opposite? Whichever way it goes, the windows are here to stay.

There are some things that annoy me about the current system, however, so I need to get this off my chest.

As I've explained, the last few days of any window are manic for clubs, not just the final hours - and that affects players, managers and coaches.

I've had experience of sitting in a hotel room waiting to play an away game but, two hours away from kick-off, still being on the phone to my chairman and chief executive about a deal that was happening that night.

That's just ridiculous, so why do the powers that be often organise midweek games during these hectic final days, or even on deadline day itself? In the past there has been a full programme of fixtures, and even this time Sunderland play Burnley on Monday evening.

Do they not understand how at this time, every club - so every player, coach and manager, and every supporter too - is zoned in on what is happening in the transfer market?

There are dedicated recruitment staff at many clubs now but managers and chairmen still need a free week before any deadline, so please use some common sense and stop this madness!

By the time today's deadline is done, we will have seen more than £1bn spent across the 2025-26 summer and winter windows by English clubs alone, mostly in the top division. It is an extraordinary amount of money, but football today is big business.

Over my 30 years of management, I have witnessed many changes to the system, with the biggest being when windows were brought in, in 2002. Before then, you could buy and sell players whenever you liked throughout the season, until a deadline at the end of March.

When that change happened, Football League clubs were still allowed to make loan signings during certain periods after the windows had shut. Again, these could have a big impact.

When Stoke were battling against relegation from the Championship in March 2003, we brought in striker Ade Akinbiyi on loan from Crystal Palace and goalkeeper Mark Crossley from Middlesbrough.

They both had a tremendous impact, with their personality as well as their performances, and we ended up staying up on the last day of the season thanks to a 1-0 win over Reading, with Ade scoring our goal.

A few years later, again when I was at Stoke, we came across a loophole in the window system, about players in the Premier League who were left out of the nominated 25-man first-team squad that were registered to play in the league following that specific window.

Those players would be allowed to be loaned out, from a week after the window had closed.

John Rudge was at Stoke with me, as our director of sport, and was a wily old fox.

As I mentioned about my coaching staff in last week's column about Michael Carrick, I always preferred an experienced head alongside me and there was no-one older and wiser than John around. I asked him to compile a list of those players who could help us.

The 2006-07 season did not start too well, and I was being criticised by some supporters about how the club had been so quiet during the summer transfer window - even my own chief executive questioned my ability to bring players in too!

The window closed but then the emergency window opened and in September, October and November of that year, we brought in Patrik Berger and Lee Hendrie from Aston Villa and Salif Diao of Liverpool, all on loan and with the parent clubs paying the majority of the players' wages.

That season we missed out on the top-six in the Championship and a play-off place after drawing at QPR on the final day, but the momentum we built up then was maintained the following year when the club reached the Premier League for the first time in its history.

If I'd not made any of those signings, I don't think the club would have made it into the top flight.

Keeping hold of players can be just as important as signing them, but there are many factors here to take into account.

During my lower-league days, the money raised by player sales was the lifeblood of many clubs and could be the difference between it staying afloat and going under, so the Bosman Ruling in 1995 had a huge effect.

It meant that if a player's contract ran out, the club had absolutely no say over his right to join another club. He would become a free agent, with the opportunity to go wherever he wished.

Even before then, the pendulum had started to swing away from the club and towards the player, because a player going into the final year of his contract would command a much smaller fee than someone at the start or middle of a long-term deal.

I was a manager at this time and would ask you to remember what I have said before, about how managers then had the authority to completely control football matters.

Because of that, it became imperative that your judgement of your players was spot-on, in respect of their valuation.

Clubs became much more aware of the importance of offering longer-term contracts, and without doubt more lucrative deals, to the players of value, and then sometimes deciding on the right time to sell.

One example that stands out was when I was manager at Bournemouth and the deadline day deal that took Efan Ekoku to Premier League side Norwich City in March 1993.

Efan was a fantastic talent but had suffered a really bad run of injuries and our board of directors had been desperate to sell him. I'd fought tooth and nail to keep him and, back fit again, he was tearing us up the table in what is now League One, scoring some spectacular goals.

With the help of my chairman, Norman Hayward, we managed to keep him at the club right up until deadline day. Norwich made an offer early that morning to buy Efan, but we held firm and only after many hours wrangling with Canaries boss Mike Walker, did we finally agree a £500,000 deal with £250,000 on top for appearances, that was compatible for both clubs.

My chairman stuck by me that day because although I knew the chance of top-flight football and to join a team challenging for the title was an amazing opportunity for Efan, and I wanted to look after him, Norman reminded me that the player was about to roll into the last season of his contract.

I didn't want to sell Efan below his market value, but not cashing in on him then could have spelt real danger for a club who were in financial difficulties, so I also had to protect its future - sometimes getting the right last-minute deal is not just about how it will affect your team on the pitch.

Tony Pulis was speaking to BBC Sport's Chris Bevan.