Window shopping

EVERY morning I wake up with a feeling of optimism.
I rise from my bed, hurtle downstairs, put on the kettle and log onto the computer.
I'm full of anticipation.
I tell myself this could be the day.
The golden day.
The day the Gas deliver on their promise.
The day that turns us from mid-table nonentities to genuine promotion challengers.
The day, in short, when Bristol Rovers sign the perfect replacement for Rickie Lambert.
Rickie was a deity at the Gas (with apologies to the one true God Gerry Francis). He was a big, battering ram of a forward with a surprisingly skillful touch, who created chances and scored phenomenal goals.
He helped us to promotion from League 2 via the play-offs, grabbed the goal that knocked Southampton, a Championship side at the time, out of the FA Cup and, most memorably, hit the stunning free kick winner against Bristol City in the semi-final of the Johnstone's Paint Trophy a few years back.
Yeah, the JPT. Hardly the biggest prize in football. But to score the goal that knocks out your neighbours and silences fans who sit a division above us but feel they have some God-given right to Premier League status, earns you legendary Gashead status.
Rickie was a legend.
So we sold him.
What's worse is we sold him to Southampton. And the bloke I sit next to at work is a big Saints fan.
So every week I hear how Rickie is banging in goals for them. "What a great signing," says my mate. "Didn't he used to play for you?" pah.
To be honest, we sell anyone who is any good. That is our role in football life. We are a "selling" club.
But normally when we sell someone we have a player in the background we have already identified as a replacement.
For instance, when we sold Jason Roberts there was a young lad called Nathan Ellington coming through the ranks. By the time he moved on Junior Agogo had been signed from non-league.
And when Agogo got shipped off for a decent fee to Nottingham Forest, we went to Rochdale to bag Rickie.
We were always thinking one step ahead.
Until now, it seems.
Lambert went when it was too late to bring in a replacement, so we held out hope that we would find someone by the January transfer window.
That came and went.
Yes, we loaned out one of the only other strikers at the club on the last day of the window to free some of the wage bill, but then failed to capture any of our targets. As flawed a piece of business as ever there was.
Never mind, we Gasheads were told, one would come along in the summer. And we are still waiting - 12 days and counting until the transfer window shuts.
It wouldn't bother me so much if it wasn't for the articles which the Bristol Rovers website countenance as news.
While we see a mass of transfer activity every day on Sky Sports News - yesterday's big announcement was that our old rivals Cardiff City from across the bridge had signed the Welsh International Craig Bellamy on loan from Manchester City - this is what we find out from our beloved club...
A Rod Stewart tribute band is appearing at the Memorial Ground.
Well, strike me down with a ginger wig and Tam o'shanter, isn't that just the news we all want to hear? Um, no.
Or take today, as the transfer saga bubbles on, the breaking news is how to obtain corporate hospitality for our home game against Southampton. Excuse me, news? No, that's just marketing.
Anyway, I don't like to think about hospitality against Southampton.
Our defence was so hospitable towards Rickie and his mates on their last visit to the Mem that they handed out goals like Hors D'ouvres. It finished 5-1.
Still, if it happens again, at least we have the consolation that replica Rod can sing us a song to cheer us up.